LTC Bullet: Long-Term Care Racism Friday, September 8, 2023 Seattle— LTC Comment: What is LTC racism? How does it manifest? What should be done? Excerpts from the scholarly literature follow the ***news.***
*** THE INTERCOMPANY LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE 2024 CONFERENCE (March 17-20, 2024 in San Diego, CA) has announced “Exhibitor & Sponsor Applications for ILTCI 2024 are Now Available! (With Early Bird Pricing).” Check out the Exhibitor & Sponsor opportunities here and here, respectively. Organizers “anticipate opening attendee registration in October so stay tuned for more updates to come!” ***
LTC BULLET: LONG-TERM CARE RACISM LTC Comment: We know America’s LTC service delivery and financing system is fraught with problems. These problems include dubious access and quality, nursing home bias, too little home- and community-based care, inadequate provider revenue, reduced private financing from insurance, savings or home equity, caregiver shortages, and excessive emotional and financial strain on family caregivers. We also know that these problems impact socioeconomically marginalized groups disproportionately. A large and growing scholarly literature attributes this LTC status quo to systemic, structural or institutionalized racism. Examples of unfair and inequitable LTC conditions and outcomes abound. So do ideas and recommendations about how to fix or improve LTC services and financing by eliminating or reducing LTC racism. Today’s LTC Bullet offers a selection of quotes about LTC racism from many peer-reviewed journal articles. For now, let’s reflect on this material and its meaning before we turn soon to analysis and recommendations. Definition: “[I]nstitutionalized racism is defined as differential access to the goods, services, and opportunities of society by race. Institutionalized racism is normative, sometimes legalized, and often manifests as inherited disadvantage. It is structural, having been codified in our institutions of custom, practice, and law, so there need not be an identifiable perpetrator.” Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener’s Tale, 2000, p. 1212 Examples: “The long-term services and supports (LTSS) sector is a microcosm of systemic racism that exists in our society. Nationally, half of frontline professional caregivers are nonwhite, while mid- and executive-level managers and board members are predominately white.” The Value Proposition for Diversity: Creating A Pipeline of Diversity in The LTSS Sector, 2022, Abstract “Long-term services and supports (LTSS), including care received at home and in residential settings such as nursing homes, are highly racially segregated; Black, Indigenous, and persons of color (BIPOC) users have less access to quality care and report poorer quality of life compared to their White counterparts. Systemic racism lies at the root of these disparities, manifesting via racially segregated care, low Medicaid reimbursement, and lack of livable wages for staff, along with other policies and processes that exacerbate disparities.” Evidence for Action: Addressing Systemic Racism Across Long-Term Services and Supports, 2022, p. 1 “Long-term services and supports for older persons in the United States are provided in a complex, racially segregated system, with striking racial disparities in access, process, and outcomes of care for residents, which have been magnified during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic. These disparities are in large measure the result of longstanding patterns of structural, interpersonal, and cultural racism in US society, which in aggregate represent an underpinning of systemic racism that permeates the long-term care system's organization, administration, regulations, and human services. … Additional foundational drivers include a fragmented payment system that advantages persons with financial resources, and reimbursement policies that systematically undervalue long-term care workers.” Addressing Systemic Racism in Nursing Homes: A Time for Action, 2021, Abstract “In this study, nursing homes with the highest proportions of non-White residents experienced COVID-19 death counts that were 3.3-fold higher than those of facilities with the highest proportions of White residents.” Factors Associated With Racial Differences in Deaths Among Nursing Home Residents With COVID-19 Infection in the US, 2021, p. 1/10. “We found that a larger share of Hispanic Medicare residents that are admitted to nursing homes have ADRD [Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias] compared with African American and White beneficiaries. Both Hispanics and African Americans with ADRD received care in segregated nursing homes with fewer resources and lower quality of care compared with White residents.” Disparities in Nursing Home Use and Quality Among African American, Hispanic, and White Medicare Residents With Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias, 2019, p.1 “Using Medicaid claims data for a national cohort of dual eligibles with MS, we find state HCBS priority is associated with disparities in utilization-blacks and Hispanics receiving HCBS more often do so in low-priority states compared with whites.” Racial Disparities in Medicaid Home and Community-Based Service Utilization among White, Black, and Hispanic Adults with Multiple Sclerosis: Implications of State Policy, 2019, Abstract “Disparities between vaccination coverage among racial/ethnic minorities versus Whites ranged from 2% to 20% for influenza and 6% to 15% for pneumococcal vaccination. Researchers reported racial/ethnic minorities were more likely to refuse vaccinations and less likely to have vaccinations offered and their vaccination status tracked compared to Whites.” Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Influenza and Pneumococcal Vaccinations Among Nursing Home Residents: A Systematic Review, 2018, p. e205 “Despite the increased use of nursing homes by minority residents, nursing home care remains highly segregated. Compared to whites, racial/ethnic minorities tend to be cared for in facilities with limited clinical and financial resources, low nurse staffing levels, and a relatively high number of care deficiency citations. … We also found that increasing the Medicaid payment rate might help improve both overall quality and disparities, but state case-mix payment approaches might worsen both.” Deficiencies In Care At Nursing Homes And Racial & Ethnic Disparities Across Homes Declined, 2006–11, 2015, p. 1 “Highlights
“Findings revealed that black residents are more likely than white residents to be restrained with bed rails, side rails, and trunk restraints. Findings suggest that racial disparities exist in the use of physical restraints. Implications for practice, policy, and research are discussed.” Racial disparities in the use of physical restraints in U.S. nursing homes, 2013, Abstract “Racial disparities in nursing homes have been reported for a number of outcomes, including pressure ulcers, influenza vaccination rates, pain management, hospice use and in-hospital death.(16–19, 22) Our findings confirm that compared to Whites, Black residents experience more aggressive EOL[End of Life] care with higher rates of in-hospital deaths and lower rates of hospice use.” Racial Disparities in In-Hospital Death and Hospice Use Among Nursing Home Residents at the End-of-life, 2012, p. 6 “Between 1999 and 2008, the number of elderly Hispanics and Asians living in US nursing homes grew by 54.9 percent and 54.1 percent, respectively, while the number of elderly black residents increased 10.8 percent. During the same period, the number of white nursing home residents declined 10.2 percent. These shifts have been driven in part by changing demographics, especially the fast growth of older minority populations. However, the numbers of minority residents in nursing homes increased more rapidly than the minority population overall, even in areas with high concentrations of minority populations. Thus, these results may indicate unequal minority access to home and community-based alternatives, which are generally preferred for long-term care. When designing initiatives to balance institutional and noninstitutional long-term care, policy makers should take steps to reduce racial and ethnic disparities.” Growth of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in US Nursing Homes Driven by Demographics and Possible Disparities in Options, 2011, p.1358 “Greater PU [pressure ulcer] occurrence among Blacks may not result from differential within-facility treatment of Blacks versus Whites. Rather, Blacks are more likely to reside in facilities with poorer care quality. To improve PU care for Blacks, efforts should focus on improving the overall quality of care for facilities with high proportion of Black residents.” Pressure ulcer prevalence among Black and White nursing home residents in New York State: Evidence of racial disparity?, 2010, p. 1 “Although segregation in nursing homes seems to have declined slightly, elderly Hispanics are more likely than their non-Hispanic white peers to reside in nursing homes that are characterized by severe deficiencies in performance, understaffing, and poor care.” Elderly Hispanics More Likely To Reside In Poor-Quality Nursing Homes, 2010, p. 65 “Disparities in quality of care are more consistently documented and appear to be related to racial and socioeconomic segregation of long-term care facilities as opposed to within-provider discrimination. Market-based incentives policies should explicitly incorporate the goal of mitigating the potential unintended consequence of increased disparities.” Disparities in long-term care: building equity into market-based reforms, 2009, Abstract “Compared to Whites, African Americans were less likely to have completed an advance directive (35.5% vs. 67.4%, P<.001) and had less favorable beliefs about hospice care (Hospice Beliefs and Attitudes Scale score, P<.001). African Americans were more likely to express discomfort discussing death, want aggressive care at the end of life, have spiritual beliefs which conflict with the goals of palliative care, and distrust the healthcare system.” What explains racial differences in the use of advance directives and attitudes toward hospice care?, 2008, p. 1 “Average nursing-home case-mix acuity for African Americans and Caucasians were essentially identical, suggesting that shifts in payment incentives have eliminated the selective admission of easy-care private-pay (predominantly Caucasian) patients and helped fuel the growth of private pay home care and assisted living for this segment of the population. While these shifts in incentives helped increase the use of nursing homes by African Americans, a high degree of segregation and disparity in the quality of the nursing homes used by African Americans persists. Parity in use is an illusive benchmark for measuring progress in assuring equity in treatment.” Racial disparities in access to long-term care: the illusive pursuit of equity, 2008, Abstract “Nursing homes remain relatively segregated, roughly mirroring the residential segregation within metropolitan areas. As a result, blacks are much more likely than whites to be located in nursing homes that have serious deficiencies, lower staffing ratios, and greater financial vulnerability. Changing health care providers’ behavior will not be sufficient to eliminate disparities in medical treatment in nursing homes.” p. 1448 “A tiered system of nursing home care that concentrates blacks in marginal-quality nursing homes also appears to exist.5” (p. 1449) “We found that nursing home care was relatively segregated in 2000, with two thirds of all black residents living in just 10 percent of all facilities.” (p. 1453) “Disparities in payment between Medicaid and private payers make the financial viability of a nursing home dependent on the proportion of private-pay patients it is able to attract. Homes unable to attract sufficient private-pay patients will tend to have lower nurse staffing levels and more-serious inspection deficiencies.”18 (p, 1456) “Nursing home operators might also try to control admissions to their facilities, limiting the number of first-day-eligible Medicaid admissions and expanding as much as possible admissions of those with sufficient resources that are unlikely to spend down and become eligible for Medicaid.” (p. 1456) “It [discrimination] might also play a role in shaping the decisions of white private-pay nursing home patients and their families about where to get care, including whether to opt for non–nursing home alternatives altogether.” (p. 1456) Separate And Unequal: Racial Segregation And Disparities In Quality Across U.S. Nursing Homes, 2007 “Non-Hispanic Whites (Whites) experienced substantially better functional outcomes than did home health care recipients of other racial/ethnic backgrounds. The disparity in outcomes was most pronounced between Whites and African Americans.” Racial and ethnic disparities in the outcomes of elderly home care recipients, 2005, Abstract “Nursing home care is currently a two-tiered system. The lower tier consists of facilities housing mainly Medicaid residents and, as a result, has very limited resources. The nearly 15 percent of U.S. nonhospital-based nursing homes that serve predominantly Medicaid residents have fewer nurses, lower occupancy rates, and more health-related deficiencies. They are more likely to be terminated from the Medicaid/Medicare program, are disproportionately located in the poorest counties, and are more likely to serve African-American residents than are other facilities. The public reporting of quality indicators, intended to improve quality through market mechanisms, may result in driving poor homes out of business and will disproportionately affect nonwhite residents living in poor communities. This article recommends a proactive policy stance to mitigate these consequences of quality competition.” Driven to Tiers: Socioeconomic and Racial Disparities in the Quality of Nursing Home Care, 2004, Abstract “African Americans are about one-third as likely as Caucasians to have living wills and one-fifth as likely as Caucasians to have DNR orders; Hispanics are about one-third as likely as Caucasians to have DNR orders and just as likely as Caucasians to have living wills. In conclusion, we found that the presence of advance care plans is related to race, even after controlling for health and other demographic factors.” Persistence of racial disparities in advance care plan documents among nursing home residents, 2002, Abstract “Results: Most African Americans resided in nursing homes and smaller RC/AL facilities and tended to be concentrated in a few predominantly African American facilities, whereas the vast majority of Whites resided in predominantly White facilities. Facilities housing African Americans tended to be located in rural, nonpoor, African American communities, to admit individuals with mental retardation and difficulty in ambulating, and to have lower ratings of cleanliness/maintenance and lighting. “Conclusions: These racial disparities may result from economic factors, exclusionary practices, or resident choice. Whether separation relates to inequities in care is undetermined.” Distribution of African Americans in Residential Care/Assisted Living and Nursing Homes: More Evidence of Racial Disparity?, 2002, p. 1272 Solutions: “We developed a set of recommendations for LTSS based on existing evidence, including (1) increase Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates, especially for providers serving high proportions of Medicaid-eligible and BIPOC older adults; (2) reconsider the design of pay-for-performance programs as they relate to providers who serve underserved groups; (3) include culturally sensitive measures, such as quality of life, in public reporting of quality of care, and develop and report health equity measures in outcomes of care for BIPOC individuals; (4) implement culture change so services are more person-centered and homelike, alongside improvements in staff wages and benefits in high-proportion BIPOC nursing homes; (5) expand access to Medicaid-waivered HCBS services; (6) adopt culturally appropriate HCBS practices, with special attention to family caregivers; (7) and increase promotion of integrated HCBS programs that can be targeted to BIPOC consumers, and implement models that value community health workers.” Evidence for Action: Addressing Systemic Racism Across Long-Term Services and Supports, 2022, p. 1 “Focusing limited available resources on facilities with high proportions of non-White residents is needed to support nursing homes during potential future [Covid-19] outbreaks.” Factors Associated With Racial Differences in Deaths Among Nursing Home Residents With COVID-19 Infection in the US, 2021, pp. 1-2/10. “The solution to racial health inequities is to address racism and its attendant harms and erect a new health care infrastructure that no longer profits from the persistence of inequitable disease.” On Racism: A New Standard For Publishing On Racial Health Inequities, 2020 “Ten-dollar
increments in Medicaid rates reduced the odds of hospitalization by 4
percent (95 percent CI=0.93–1.00) for white residents and 22 percent (95
percent CI=0.69–0.87) for black residents.” (p. 869) “What can be done to cut this knot? A multi-prong effort in four areas could help: (1) disproportionate-share payment adjustments to nursing homes with a higher proportion of Medicaid residents; (2) equalization of Medicaid and private-pay payments; (3) certificate-of-need and broader regional planning responsive to racial-disparity concerns; and (4) ongoing monitoring and more rigorous enforcement of Title VI in admission practices. Indeed, some of the MSA variations on these measures of disparities may reflect variations in effort in these areas. These findings are not very different for the nursing home sector than for other parts of the health system in terms of the characteristics of this knot or in the possible approaches to cutting it.” Separate And Unequal: Racial Segregation And Disparities In Quality Across U.S. Nursing Homes, 2007, pp. 1456-7 |