![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/TheresNoPlaceLikeHome-300x189.png\" "\\"TheresNoPlaceLikeHome\\"")
As lawmakers tackle another year of budgets and bills, advocates for older Floridians want to make sure vital services are preserved and consumer protections for people of all ages are in place.<\/p>\nBy Public News Service<\/p>\n
As lawmakers tackle another year of budgets and bills, advocates for older Floridians want to make sure vital services are preserved and consumer protections for people of all ages are in place.<\/p>\n
Since the vast majority of older people would prefer to age in place, Jack McRay,\u00a0AARP Florida<\/a>\u00a0advocacy manager, said his group is working for increased funding for programs and services that allow people to stay in their homes. He said it makes financial sense for the state, as an alternative to the high cost of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.<\/p>\n “If we could get more people into home- and community-based services, you could serve more people with the same amount of money,” he said, “or you could serve more people at a lower cost for the state.”<\/p>\n Last year, legislators approved an increase of about 200 slots for Medicaid waivers for programs and services that help older people maintain their independence. However, McRay noted that there is a wait-list of more than 59,000 people for those types of services.<\/p>\n Along with measures to ensure affordable-housing options, McRay said, one of the more promising pieces of legislation that could help people age in place involves “telehealth”: using technology to allow more health-care providers to offer routine visits and check-ups via computers, telephones and smartphone apps.<\/p>\n “With this advance in technology, there are all sorts of things that can be done to help people remain in their homes even longer, and avoid institutionalization, perhaps altogether,” he said, “and that’s the most expensive care that there is.”<\/p>\n Analysts estimate that if telehealth could reduce costly medical interventions such as emergency-room use and length of hospital stay by just 1 percent, McRay said, the state would realize a cost savings of more than $1 billion.<\/p>\n This week, a measure to expand telehealth services in Florida was approved by the Senate Health Policy Committee. The bill, SB 1686, is online at\u00a0flsenate.gov<\/a>. More information is at\u00a0aarp.org\/FL<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Public News Service As lawmakers tackle another year of budgets and bills, advocates for older Floridians want to make sure vital services are preserved and consumer protections for people… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}