Although there will still be time to squeeze in a vacation day or two or three, there hasn’t been any slow-down at all at the Association office for some reason. 

Here are a few new projects that have made progress in the past few weeks:

Meetings with candidates for Governor: We thought it was important to talk early to the various candidates, even if we don’t know who the top two or three frontrunners will be. We want to make sure there is a solid knowledge of our issues before the candidates finalized their priorities. From our biased perspective, how could a gubernatorial candidate today NOT care about older adult services given the demographics and “power” of that voting cohort? All candidates receive a packet of information from us when they announce and we are currently setting up face-to-face meetings for August and September.

Planning for a rough few years:  We know that the budget numbers look tough now and into the next few years but that doesn’t mean we should be giving up on “fixing” what is wrong with older adult services financing and service delivery. So, with our LTC Imperative partners we invited a guest speaker to a steering committee meeting last week to get the ball rolling. Dane Smith from Growth and Justice talked about our budget, possible revenue sources, and the need we have to make a good case that older adult services are a public investment rather than a budget burden. We are taking these initial discussions into an August retreat session where we will put “pen to paper” and come up with a document that highlights the investment but also identifies the new revenues we believe should be “found” to finance our services.

Don’t Forget about the “fun stuff”: We are finalizing our materials for the second Leading4Life Leadership fellowship program—materials will be sent out next month in time for the 2010 class to be welcomed at the November graduation ceremony for the inaugural class. Lots of good stuff happened with this program this year and we are excited to be able to move ahead with a slightly revised but still focused relationship with the Hill Center for Ethical Business Leadership.  Another Foundation program off and running is the research grants that will be announced from the James B. Swanson Memorial fund this fall. This fund has an unusual resolution insofar that there have been timeframes set up to spend the balance of the funds starting next year. A third “fun” program that has been many meetings in the making is the clinical competency demonstration clinic that we will be “adding” on to our November convention this year—an exciting joint initiative with Minneapolis Community & Technical College. 

Figuring Out the “Hard Stuff”: We know there are ongoing financial challenges for most of our members but the reasons for them are quite varied so sometimes we feel like we are herding cats here. For our nursing facility members, we are reconvening our Imperative Payment Committee to look at rebasing options; payment issues from last session such as critical access nursing facilities; and new possible opportunities such as flexible licensure. For our housing and community-based services members, we have been spending much of the spring and summer reacting to and providing alternatives to the state on their rate-setting tool under the elderly waiver program as well as the related assessment changes. We know this is a time of great change for our HCBS members so we have already started the process of developing resources and tools to help you manage these upcoming changes. For all members we are just now seeing some push-back from health plans under the state’s managed care programs so we anticipate some interim discussions with them on their role and on how we can work together in a more cooperative fashion.

And this is just a sampling! 

Be sure if you are signed up for a committee that you try to make your committee meetings this summer to help us figure out our top priorities during these next few months. I know it seems like we just ended the legislative session but it is already time to look ahead. As always, if you have any ideas/suggestions please forward them to us.