TERRE HAUTE —
More than 200 people in the Wabash Valley are waiting for in-home health care and other assistance through the state’s CHOICE program.
CHOICE stands for Community and Home Options to Institutional Care for the Elderly and Disabled. The program, which is funded by the State of Indiana, is designed to give people the help they need to remain in their homes when they are having trouble taking care of themselves.
“It’s based on the client’s needs,” said Gloria Wetnight, assistant program director at the Area 7 Agency on Aging and Disabled in Terre Haute. CHOICE helps people in a variety of ways, including providing meals, housekeeping and medical assistance.
Area 7 manages the CHOICE program for six Wabash Valley counties, including Vigo, on a budget of about $1.17 million, officials said.
To qualify for CHOICE assistance, a person must have two disabilities affecting normal daily life. For example, CHOICE recipients sometimes cannot prepare their own meals or require assistance moving about their homes. By comparison, to qualify for Medicaid nursing home assistance, an individual must have three such disabilities.
About 204 people were on the Area 7 CHOICE waiting list this month. That’s about average, Wetnight said. In May, several people who had been on the list were brought into the program, she noted.
Statewide, more than 6,000 people are on the CHOICE waiting list, said John Cardwell, chairman of the Indiana Home Care Task Force. He was in Terre Haute on Friday campaigning to increase CHOICE funding, something he said would save the state money by keeping people out of nursing homes.
In some parts of Indiana, a person eligible for CHOICE assistance may still have to wait up to three years to receive aid, Wetnight said. Even in the Wabash Valley, the wait can be up to a year or longer, she said.
“Some people say, ‘I’ll be dead by then,’ ” and don’t bother to go on the list, Wetnight said.
Area 7 was serving about 105 people as of Aug. 15 through the CHOICE program, Wetnight said. However, the agency serves about 900 needy clients with other forms of assistance.
Cardwell and other CHOICE advocates want the State of Indiana to stop using CHOICE dollars to help meet the state’s Medicaid match — the part a state must pay to receive federal Medicaid funding. State officials say that’s a good use of the dollars since the federal government matches the payments. But advocates want CHOICE fully funded and Indiana’s Medicaid matching dollars to come from the state’s general fund, not the CHOICE program.
According to the Indiana Home Care Task Force, about 29,000 Hoosiers are currently in nursing homes on Medicaid. States with similar demographics, such as Washington and Oregon, have only 12,000 or 14,000 Medicaid recipients in nursing homes, they said.
CHOICE “is a very successful program,” said Indiana House Rep. Clyde Kersey, D-Terre Haute, who spoke at the task force news conference Friday at the Vigo County Public Library. Many legislators simply do not understand the benefits of the CHOICE program, he said. And when the state’s budget it tight, “it’s always the first place they cut.”
Reporter Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@
tribstar.com.
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