Chapter 9 of the 2012 Book of the States contains the following articles and tables:

Book of the States 2012

Chapter 9: Selected State Policies and Programs

Articles:

Three out of four people with Alzheimer's disease will end up in a nursing home unless better systems of community care and support are built in states. Even without robust systems, today, nearly 15 million caregivers provide care valued at $202 billion. 

The nation’s top advocacy group for older Americans, AARP, along with the Commonwealth Fund and the Scan Foundation released a state scorecard on long-term services and supports available for older adults, people with physical disabilities and their family caregivers.

The new report, Raising Expectations, looks at services in states across four dimensions, affordability and access, choice of setting and provider, quality of life and quality of care, and support of family caregivers, and ranks them in quartiles.

The federal government has launched a new initiative designed to change how states deliver services in one of the most costly areas of Medicaid: long-term care.

This Act provides a mechanism to enable patients with the ability to acquire lower cost drugs through the Veterans‘ Administration to access those drugs if those patients reside in a different long-term care facility. This means permitting the pharmacy within the long-term care facility or which has a contract with the long-term care facility to receive the lower cost drugs directly from the Veterans‘ Administration Drug Benefit Program in the patient's name and repackage and re-label those drugs so they may be dispensed in unit doses to the patient.

Changes in state policy are helping Ohio rebalance its long-term-care system in a way that expands choices for consumers and results in cost savings.

The majority of state Medicaid programs are testing models of coordinated medical care to improve quality and reduce costs, particularly for patients with multiple chronic illnesses.  Patient-centered medical homes are similar to managed care approaches and health maintenance organizations, but ask providers to focus on improving care rather than managing costs. Such medical homes focus on improving the relationship between doctors and patients, aim to put the patient at the center of the care system, and provide coordinated and integrated care over time and across care settings. Descriptions of eleven states’ pilot programs or authorizing legislation are included.

One New Hampshire woman had been caring for her husband with Alzheimer's disease for two years. Devoted to his needs, she couldn’t leave the house. That meant she couldn’t go to her book club two nights a week.  What seemed like such a small thing was actually a key step in keeping her emotionally and mentally healthy, and avoiding burnout—a high risk for family members who become caregivers of sickly or elderly patients.