Services and options for Virginia’s older adults are insufficient for its growing population of seniors, according to a state watchdog report released Monday. There aren’t enough beds in most facilities because of staffing issues, regional services aren’t meeting the need, and pretty much every form of care is underfunded.
Monday’s meeting of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission offered a bleak view of care options for Virginia’s elderly.
“Our main findings include the supply of assisted living and in-home care is often lowest in the regions where older adult needs are the highest. Most older Virginians' income is not sufficient to afford assisted living or a few hours of home care per week,” said commission analyst Joe McMahon listing some of the concerns from Monday’s report.
Among possible fixes is an increase to the state’s auxiliary grant program to help pay for lower income elderly care. But even as its funding has increased over the years, not enough facilities accept the grant and it’s still not enough to cover an individual’s total costs. Roanoke Delegate Sam Rasoul asked about the overlap local agencies that provide services for the elderly, called Area Agencies on Aging, or triple As, could have to increase service availability.
Here’s McMahon with one solution: “You could set up a different funding approach to target specific triple As with higher, higher, regions with higher need or lower supply.”
McMahon said an additional $38 million in state funds would help address the existing issue for now.
One of the overarching issues is staffing. That leads to bigger issues at facilities. Among fixes is an acuity-based staffing standard, one that would be defined by the kind of work a facility does.
“There’s no easy answer here, and that’s why we think it would take a lot of time to get to a standard that is sufficient to improve quality without just increasing staff that may not actually make much of a difference,” said Dillon Wild with JLARC.
Tara Ragland, Director of Division of Licensing at Virginia's Division of Social Services, addressed JLARC's findings related to the agencies inefficient oversight of elder care facilities. She said she agreed with many of their recommendations but warned: "These carry significant fiscal implications for effective implementation."
Delegate Charniele L. Herring asked specifically about replacing the computer system they use to manage facility oversight: "We think we can get a new system for around $3 million," Ragland said.
The 2027 legislative session starts in January. We’ll get a view on how legislators want to address Virginia’s aging care issues more then.
