Senior News May, 2002 Vol. 21. No.  5

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Historic Register: Washington School receives national recognition

Senior issues: Commission hears from local providers

Springcreek Place:Affordable senior housing opens in Eureka

McKinleyville: How can we help?

Del Norte InfoCenter: One-stop shopping for senior and family services

Assistive Technology Classes

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Senior issues
Commission hears from local providers
by Barbara Clark

The California Commission on Aging held a day-long public meeting April 10 at the Eureka Inn. The first of its regional meetings was planned to seek information from a rural community aboutthe issues facing seniors here.

The commission advises the governor and state legislature. It is the principal advocate body in California on behalf of older people. In the past it has sponsored a state conference on aging and selected delegates for the last White House Conference on Aging, held hearings on the rewrite of the Older Californians Act, and plans to conduct a forum on seniors and the current energy crisis.

Mary Dennison of Eureka is a member of the commission. Others were visiting from Alameda, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Lake, Mendocino, Orange and Fresno counties. Of those, only Lake and Mendocino are also considered rural or remote. One of the commissioners, Shirley Bierly of San Francisco, also represents the California Association for Older Americans and has written and published Senior Power, a quarterly newsletter which has covered senior issues since 1982.

The area of largest concern to rural areas were the distances providers needed to travel to deliver services and the same distances seniors need to travel for medical, social and other activities. Also of concern were state and federal funding which doesn't take those factors into account, the declining revenues in state and federal funding and regulations written that favor urban areas.

Distance and travel issues
Dennis Dudley is executive director of Planning and Service Area 2 (PSA2), Area Agency on Aging in Yreka. Dudley described the travel challenges of spanning 22,000 square miles including Lassen, Modoc, Siskiyou, Trinity and Shasta counties.

Carole Treadway of Redding is the administrator of the Golden Umbrella in Redding, a 35-year-old organization which provides a number of state funded senior programs in PSA2. Their biggest challenges are the regulations written "in concrete" that fund programs like Linkages and MSSP which require one staff member to serve a certain number of clients, a ratio that is not negotiable. "Meeting with one client in an outlying area can mean a whole day's trip," she said.

Victoria Onstine, an advisory council member of the Area 1 Agency on Aging (our area is PSA1) and administrator of Mad River Home Health, addressed the need to pay for the costs of travel and to remove regulations that restrict the distance the home health nurses can travel from their offices.
She is noticing a growing trend among people ages 50 to 60 who don't have access to health care now. "Poor attention to health needs today will mean greater need for care when they are seniors."

Transportation
Thea Gast, a member of the AAA advisory council and assembly member of the California Senior Legislature, discussed the woeful lack of public transportation services. She described the awkward trip an Arcata resident must make on Dial-A-Ride, the only discounted cost discretionary transportation system available. The resident takes Dial-A-Ride to the city limit of Arcata where the same vehicle becomes a taxicab between the city limits of Arcata and Eureka and becomes Dial-A-Ride again in Eureka.

Southern Humboldt
Evelyn King, executive director of the Healy Senior Center in Redway, said that some of the people who come to her nutrition site drive an hour on dirt roads to get there. She said, "Gasoline prices are the highest here than anywhere in the US."

Patti Rose of Garberville, representing the Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District, talked about the fate of the Jerold Phelps Community Hospital. The hospital district is asking its residents to vote for a $75 a year increase in property taxes to keep the six-bed acute care hospital open. The hospital also provides six beds for a skilled nursing facility. Emergency care patients would have to travel to Fortuna if the hospital is forced to close.

Rose also represented Southern Humboldt Senior Care which is building the first affordable senior housing in Garberville. Because unincorporated areas only have access to HUD funds, their development is limited to 12 units. Her ultimate plan of 30 units becomes more expensive because it entails subdividing, and two different projects require workers to commute an hour each way.

Rose also told the commissioners that a Southern Humboldt agency had received a grant to create a telemedicine program, but the phone lines are not adequate and the local phone company refused to connect them to Pacific Bell.

Assisted living issues
Mary Johnson, administrator for Timber Ridge, a residential care facility for the elderly (RCFE), was blunt in her comments. "Those who plan well retire well," she said. "Those who have money have options." The rest, she explained, are controlled by what Medicaid dollars (Medi-Cal in California) will pay for. She would like the commission to explore a voucher program that Oregon and 22 other states have.

She described the RCFE as a "home-like" environment, yet regulations prohibit them from providing home health care services they could get in their own homes. So if residents need intravenous infusions, they must be transported to an emergency room (to have the service paid for by Medi-Cal).
Bill Clausen, a local consultant and trainer in the residential care industry, raised the spectre of insurance rates. He said that liability insurance premiums for the RCFE industry had been raised four-fold this year. He asked the commissioners to demand an accounting from the Insurance Commisison.

Barbara Walser, president of the AAA advisory council and administrator of Silvercrest Senior Residence, talked about the biggest problem facing her low income tenants who have an average of less than $10,000 annual income. "When they can no longer live independently at our residence, assisted living would be better for them. But they don't have a choice. They have to go to a skilled nursing facility which is paid for by Medi-Cal."

Senior nutrition
Joyce Hayes, director of the Humboldt Senior Resource Center's nutrition program which serves 500 meals a day in six different communities, reported a continuing challenge to meet the growing demand. She said the US Dept. of Agriculture used to underwrite nutrition service at 58¢ a meal, and now only provides 53¢ a meal. The agency saw that many seniors needed seven meals a week, and met that and other needs by creating a frozen meal program. Now hundreds of meals are being delivered by UPS to remote sites outside of Eureka. However, she added, "We've seen a 25 percent drop in donations this year because utilities and prescriptions are going up."

She also said that last year's successful Farmers Market Voucher program which provided 1,100 seniors with vouchers to buy fresh fruit and vegetables at local organic farmers markets, was trimmed this year to serve only 400 seniors.

Adult Day Health
With three Adult Day Health programs in Northern Humboldt, Maggie Kraft, director of two of them, spoke to the growing need for an additional facility. She said that 20 to 30 people are consistently on her waiting list, and her program in Eureka is regularly sending people to the Fortuna and the Adult Day Health Care of Mad River programs.

Physician shortage
Gwynna Morris, chair of the Area 1 Agency on Aging, said there were so few physicians in our area that the government has designated this as a physician shortage area.

Anthony Antoville of the Information and Assisance Program talked about oral health care. He said that there is no in-house oral health care at skilled nursing facilities and no preventive health care. Coverage is provided for extractions and dentures only.

Success story
Humboldt County Public Health Nurse Roseann Potter spoke about the county's senior health clinics which are funded through state and county monies. The clinic nurses see 500 people a year and can spend an hour with each patient, unlike the doctors' visits of ten minutes. "We find things that they don't," she said. "Many Medi-Cal-eligible people are starving, are not buying the food they need," she said. "Getting people to accept that help means forming a relationship with them."