My overall impression was WOW— 2009 was a really, really busy year.

As I scrolled through our on-line newsletters and calendars it became very clear that change was the only certain thing we could bank on in 2009. We started out the year battling potentially negative media by participating in the Vulnerable Adults Justice Project and ended the year battling potentially negative media by developing tools and papers on falls in the elderly. (Well, maybe there were some common threads—media scrutiny!)

We started emphasizing new ways to communicate information to our members, from increased use of social media to videos to lots and lots of webinar trainings. While we may be ahead of many of you in the social media evolution, if you are reading this blog posting, you are about right in the middle of the learning “pack.”

We joined with new partners to provide “added value” services to our members, whether advocacy, training, new programs or more positive public relations:  Vulnerable Adults Justice Coalition, James J. Hill Center for Ethical Business Leadership, Emergency Preparedness with Minnesota Department of Health, Co-Cares Coalition, Caring for our Caregivers resources, Alzheimers’ Disease Working Group, Citizen’s League LTC Financing Reform Working Group, Chamber of Commerce Health Policy Committee, Medline Foundation.

We began working with great earnestness on a whole new set of advocacy issues as new initiatives led to planned and unintended consequences.  A small sampling:

• addressing the repercussions from all of the Medicare and Medicaid fraud initiatives with a brand new alphabet soup: RAC, MAC, MIP. One of the downstream impacts being Medicare beneficiaries “losing out” of their skilled nursing facility benefit due to use of hospital observation days;

• pushing and pushing and pushing state agency staff as they finalized the development of the elderly waiver customized living rate setting toolkit and process. The end product may not be ideal but there were so many improvements made along the way throughout 2009;

• determining how special focus facilities are identified; and what needs to happen to “unfocus” the special focus;

• life safety code issues—how hard is it to get an approved letter from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services??

What lies ahead for 2010??? My initial list is heavy with implications: federal health care reform and its myriad of implications to the Medicare program, Medicaid program, employers, and business partners; a significant state budget deficit with a huge target drawn around the health and human services budget; integration of quality initiatives at all levels of membership; significant elections; MDS 3.0, and how to ensure that members continue to get paid; the elderly waiver customized living rate setting tool and how to ensure that members continue to get paid enough; implementation of level of care/return to the community initiatives; increased role of health plans in “controlling” waiver program utilization and Brett Favre potentially playing in the Super Bowl with the Vikings!

Yeah, there is a lot on the horizon for 2010 but we will be ready to: empower our members to achieve excellence through advocacy, education, knowledge, resources and support!  Make sure to help us help you by signing up for one of our 2010 committees—sign-up is available on our website – click here to sign up.

Thank you for your membership in 2009 and for your participation in your Association. 

Have a safe holiday season!

Patti