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With projected increases in the population of disabled Ohioans, senior researcher Shahla Mehdizadeh of Miami University's Scripps Gerontology Center, predicts the need for care for those residents will take more money from the state's budget for facilities, health care costs and staffing.
In "Disability in Ohio: Current and Future Demand for Services," the first in a set of three reports, Mehdizadeh explores the size of Ohio's current and future populations with disability, their long-term care service needs, the current capacity to meet those needs, and how medical, social and environmental advances might affect the size of the population with long-term care needs. She is sharing her findings with state legislators and administrators on aging.
Mehdizadeh, also adjunct associate professor of sociology and gerontology, explores the public and private (out of pocket) costs of providing long-term care and support today and by 2020, when the oldest members of the baby boom generation will be 75 years old. Estimates of future long-term care use are based on the assumption that current patterns will continue, even though there are already efforts by the state to alter some of these trends.
Key findings:
o Of the more than 308,570 estimated persons with severe disability in Ohio, in 2007 a little over 181,670 (58.9 percent) received formal care, the other 41.1 percent either received all of their care from family and friends (informal care) or purchased home care services out-of-pocket. Mehdizadeh predicts almost 40,000 more people in the severely disabled population, a 13 percent increase, by 2020.
o Almost 79 percent of those who obtained formal care (or 46 percent of the individuals with severe disability) received that care through publicly funded programs.
o If the cost of health care expenditures grows at only 3 percent annually from 2007 to 2020, the total public cost of long-term care services for Ohio's severely disabled population will increase from $4.9 billion in 2007 to almost $8 billion in 2020, an increase of 64 percent; 52.4 percent of this increase is due to inflation and 11.6 percent is due to the increased number of individuals who will need care.
o However, on average, between 2000 and 2006, long-term care expenditures in Ohio grew at an average annual rate of 7.5 percent, accounting for 42 percent of the total Medicaid budget from federal, state, and local sources. If Medicaid long-term care expenditures continue to grow at this rate, by the year 2020, the total long-term care portion of Medicaid allocations from all sources will grow to over $13.2 billion.
Even though nursing homes and residential care facilities, the two major long-term care institutional settings, will have the physical space to accommodate the future demand - in 2005, they had occupancy rates of 86.4 percent and 76.9 percent respectively - they, along with other care enterprises, will need additional health care workers to provide the care, adds Mehdizadeh.
Mehdizadeh ran a variety of scenarios of cost growth and budget growth rates to help state officials estimate how much of their budget may be spent on long-term care, and to encourage exploration of alternative means of care services and supports.
Other Scripps reports are online at ttp://scripps.muohio.edu/research/publications.html.
The study was funded by the Ohio Long-Term Care Research Project through the support of the Ohio Board of Regents.
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