Family Care Resource Centers'
Statutory Requirement to Provide Information to Residents of Long Term
Care Facilities
PDF Version of BQA 02-005 (PDF,
7 KB)
Date: February 14, 2002 -- DSL-BQA-02-005
To: Adult Family
Homes AFH - 01,
Community Based Residential Facilities CBRF
- 03,
Facilities for the Developmentally Disabled FDD
- 02.
Nursing Homes NH - 02,
Residential Care Apartment
Complexes RCAC - 01 From: Chuck Wilhelm, Director,
Office of Strategic Finance
Susan Schroeder, Director, Bureau of Quality Assurance
When the Wisconsin Legislature created the Family Care
program, it
decided that residents in long term care facilities located in those
counties where the Family Care benefit became available should be informed
of this benefit. This legislative decision is reflected in the provisions
of sec.
46.283(4)(e), Wis. Stats (exit DHFS). This law requires the Family Care resource
center in your county to provide certain specific information about its
services and the availability of the Family Care benefit to residents of
long term care facilities in the county, and to county residents placed in
long term care facilities in other counties. We urge you to cooperate with
the resource center to make this effort as successful as possible.
The long term care facilities included in this outreach effort include
nursing homes, ICFs-MR, state Centers for Developmental Disabilities,
community based residential facilities, adult family homes, and
residential care apartment complexes. The residents who must be provided
information include those who are elderly, or who have a physical or
developmental disability.
Resource centers are required to provide this information within six
months of the date on which Family Care becomes an entitlement in their
county. Fond du Lac, La Crosse, Portage and Milwaukee counties will reach
their two-year anniversary dates during 2002; the Care Management
Organization in Richland County will reach its anniversary date in January
2003.
The contract between DHFS and the resource centers lists the steps the
resource centers must take to provide residents of long term care
facilities with the information that the Legislature has decided these
residents must have. First, the resource centers are required to give or
send a letter explaining the major features of the Family Care program to
every resident of a long term care facility who belongs to a target
population group served by the resource center. (The resource center in
Milwaukee County serves only individuals at least 60 years of age while
the resource centers in Fond du Lac, La Crosse, Portage and Richland
counties serve individuals at least 65 years of age or individuals at
least 18 years of age with physical or developmental disabilities.)
Second, each resource center is also required to use one other method,
such as individual or group meetings, to provide information about Family
Care to residents.
Resource center staff want to work as closely and as cooperatively as
possible with the administrators and staff of long term care facilities in
their area so that residents will receive the information about Family
Care that the law says they should have. Over the course of the next few
months, staff from the resource center in your county will be contacting
you and your staff to discuss how the resource center can provide this
information to residents in ways that are compatible with the activities
and routines of your facility. Resource center staff may ask you and your
staff to help distribute letters to residents and decision-makers such as
families, guardians or activated Powers of Attorney for Health Care.
Similarly, they may ask you and your staff to help them schedule and hold
meetings with residents. It is our hope and expectation that you will
cooperate fully with the resource center in carrying out this statutory
requirement.
If you have any questions about the information in this memo, please
contact Peter Baugher, (608) 261-8390, at the Center for Delivery
Systems Development; or Deb Bursaw, (608) 267-2838, at the Bureau of
Quality Assurance. They will be happy to help you.
For more information about the Family Care program, visit our web site
at http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/ltcare.
This memo is also available on the BQA’s Numbered Memo web site at: http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/rl_DSL/
Publications/BQAnodMems.htm
cc: Family
Care Resource Centers (PDF, 24 KB)
Tom Moore, Wisconsin Health Care
Association (exit DHFS)
John Sauer, Wisconsin Association
of Homes & Services for the Aging (exit DHFS)
Jim Murphy, Wisconsin Assisted Living
Association (exit DHFS)
Anthony Earl, Wisconsin Association of Adult Family Care Coordinators
George Potaracke, Board
of Aging and Long Term Care (exit DHFS)
Jane Svinicki, Wisconsin Association of
Residential Facilities (exit DHFS) (WARF)
Michael Blumenfeld, Blumenfeld and Associates
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