Fingerprint law takes effect April 1

Published 11:43 am Friday, March 31, 2006

By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Folks get fixed in the hospital, but they get well at home.
She said the Legislature has been “very mindful of people being hired to go into people's homes. There's no state licensure for home health or assisted living centers,” though that changes in a big way April 1.
For currently active employees, “We have at least a year to get them fingerprinted,” she said, “but they have to sign attestation forms saying that they have not committed a crime. This was designed to protect vulnerable adults. Seven states are participating in this grant. The state's in a bit of a frenzy now because there's only one place to get fingerprinted in Kalamazoo County and one place in Cass County. This does not affect hospitals except home health units. Anybody who goes into a nursing home - a contractor, a provider - will have to be fingerprinted if they have access to any part of a patient. It kind of went to the extreme. It's going to make it very difficult and really tighten down which contractors go in to nursing homes. ‘Casual people' it won't affect.”
Another “big deal” is Medicare Part D, the prescription drug act.
May 15 marks the end of the first enrollment. The next enrollment will not be until Nov. 15 through Dec. 31, 2006, with coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2007.
For those who wait to enroll, there will be a 1-percent penalty each month between June and December for the first open enrollment period and each month thereafter for those waiting until the November/December 2007 open enrollment.
Eldred has corporate responsibility for Borgess-Lee Memorial Hospital in Dowagiac and also is president of Borgess Visiting Nurses and Hospice, whose eight-county staffs of 280 include 50 home health care professionals.
In 1998-99, she was even interim administrator of Dowagiac Nursing Home.
Eldred, 54, has been a registered nurse for 30 years. She is a Rotarian with the Kalamazoo Noon Club.
Eldred started as a public health nurse in Detroit housing projects.
Her first visit as a fourth-year nursing student was to monitor a 15-year-old mother whose baby died before Eldred's second visit.
She arrived in Kalamazoo in 1975 and joined what was then known as the Kalamazoo Visiting Nurses, serving just that county. Today's eight-county service area stretches from the Indiana border north to Kent County.
Home care is “like a car,” Eldred said. “You don't really know anything about it until you have to go shopping for it. For senior citizens, it's one of the last remaining benefits where there's no deductible or co-pay. It's a service you can have if you've been in the hospital and you're sick and you need follow-up home care services, whether it's nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy or personal care for a brief period of time. You can have those services on an intermittent basis in your home for up to probably eight to 12 weeks or by the visit and not have to pay. People don't know that. That benefit is the same across the nation. No matter what hospital bed they're lying in, there's a discharge planner. Get in touch with those discharge planners because they're entitled to that benefit.”
Another service, Eldred said, is that intermittent nurses are cross-trained for hospice. “At the end stage of their lives, they don't have to discharge
that patient to a hospice. That same nurse is certified, so they end up getting that very same nurse with that hospice benefit. Hospice is a reimbursement mechanism. All their medications are paid for 100 percent. Everything is paid for at 100 percent, including the hospital bed and oxygen. The nurse's services in the home is 100 percent, but all that equipment is 80 percent/20 percent. When you go into a hospice benefit, all of it is paid for 100 percent. Pain control medication is extraordinarily expensive, so the hospice benefit was designed to keep people in their homes. We work very closely with the Lee discharge planners so we can help them arrange care throughout their service area.
Gadgets have become so sophisticated, there is a medication dispenser that “calls out” the patient's name as a reminder that “it's time for your pills.”
Terry Harris of Southwestern Michigan College asked Eldred how the nursing shortage impacts home health care.
Her son is a bank officer. Her daughter teaches.
March 30 was “Doctors Day,” for which she recognized Dr. M.S. Zaman, who has practiced medicine for 35 years.