Home Is Where The Funds Are Not | State cuts hit local elder-care companies
Employees at Ace Medical Services in Worcester come from all over the world. The 2-year-old company hires native speakers of Greek, Russian, Polish, Spanish and other languages, most with no college education, trains them, and puts them to work helping elderly and sick people with day-to-day tasks while talking to them in the language they know.
But these days there’s less work to go around. Michael Chege, the company’s CEO and co-founder, said Ace started the year with about 48 employees and is now down to an average of 30 in any given week. Like other home care companies, Ace has been hit hard by state cuts, and, with the Massachusetts budget once again in turmoil, the worst may be still to come.
“I’m very worried,” Chege said. “The expenses are going up and we are not getting any more work.”
Wait-Listed
According to Mass Home Care, the umbrella group for state-funded home care agencies, cuts made in the state budget for fiscal year 2010 reduced funding for home health care by about $16 million, or 6 to 7 percent. As a result, on Sept. 9, agencies that work with home health clients were forced to start putting most of the eligible people who applied to them on waiting lists.
In Worcester and the surrounding towns, state-sponsored home care is provided through Elders Services of Worcester Area Inc., which contracts with companies like Ace to provide services. The agency’s executive director, Lou Swan, said that, as of mid-October, 48 people have been placed on the local waiting list. Swan said the only people he can offer services to fall into special categories, including victims of elder abuse and people who would be forced into a nursing home immediately without home care.
Swan said the industry’s projections suggest 5,000 people across the state will have to go on waiting lists before the agencies can begin serving any of those who have been wait-listed. In the Worcester area, he said, 1,947 people were part of Elder Services’ home care program on Oct. 1. By July, he estimates the number will be down to 1,550, as existing clients enter nursing homes or die.
That reduction would come without removing any current clients from the rolls, but Gov. Deval Patrick recently announced plans for another round of cuts to cover new budget shortfalls, and Swan said that could well mean taking services away from some of the ill and elderly people his agency serves now.
Already, Ace Medical’s Chege said, he’s unable to help some elderly people who need support to buy groceries or pick up medications from the pharmacy. And, as winter approaches, he’s even more worried about what the consequences for them will be.
“Sometimes nobody goes to see them at all,” he said. “If you’re unable to go there you see a lot of problems.”
Barbara Girouard, home care director for Family Services of Central Massachusetts in Shrewsbury, one of the larger agencies that does work for Elder Services, said she has many of the same worries.
“I’ve been with this agency 28 years and I’ve never seen it this bad,” she said.
Unlike Ace, Family Services has not yet completely let go of any of its approximately 100 employees, Girouard said, but many are working reduced hours.
“Everyone here is feeling the crunch, the stress of it,” she said.
Private Impact
Even home health companies that don’t work with government-funded clients are feeling the state cuts. Kim Harmon, CEO and owner of Harmon Home Health, said families are calling her agency after being denied state-paid care, even though in many cases they don’t have the money to pay for private care.
“We’re seeing a higher volume of these types of calls come into the agency, more than I think I have in the three year we’ve been in business,” she said.
As a result, Harmon said, her company has increased its focus on helping clients get access to available resources, from veterans’ benefits to charitable support.
“We’re doing more quarterbacking than we ever have,” she said.
In fact, Harmon said, the company tries to help callers find services they can use even if they don’t become paying customers at all.
Meanwhile, private home care providers are also facing problems of their own. Girouard said the 5 to 10 percent of her business that is private clients has suffered from the recession.
“People who were paying for their services, if they had their money in the stock market and they lost it they’re cutting back,” she said.
Girouard said she’s also had lots of job applicants coming in after seeing their hours reduced or eliminated at private agencies.
At Ace, where about 60 percent of business comes through Elder Services, Chege said the current climate is pushing the company in new directions. Right now, he said, it’s working on getting certified to offer services through Medicare and Medicaid.
“I don’t see much future right now, so we are trying to diversify,” he said.
Home health agencies are also pushing back at the state, lobbying to protect their services from the round of cuts being formulated now. Girouard said she and her fellow employees at Family Services all made calls to the governor’s office as part of a campaign by Mass Home Care. But she said the news coming out of a recent meeting she attended with other home health providers isn’t good.
“All the information they were giving us was very discouraging, and nothing positive,” she said. “Right now we’re just hanging in there, hoping things don’t continue.”
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