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Lawmakers hear testimony calling HB 2061 a step to address turnover among case managers and APS workers
Summary
At a public hearing on House Bill 2061, advocates, Medicaid area agency staff and Adult Protective Services workers described high caseloads, policy accumulation and burnout. The bill would create a task force to study workforce and policy issues affecting case managers and adult protective services workers.
The House Committee on Early Childhood and Human Services opened a public hearing April 1 on House Bill 2061, which would establish a task force to examine issues affecting Medicaid-funded long-term care case managers and adult protective services (APS) workers.
Representative Lucetta Elmer (House District 24) opened the hearing in support, saying case managers and APS workers are “the lifeline for our aging parents” and describing conversations with area agencies that reported many case managers had caseloads “over 80” clients. “Turnover is rising, burnout is real, and the system cannot survive without them,” Elmer said.
Witnesses from Northwest Senior and Disability Services and the Oregon Association of Area Agencies on Aging and Disabilities (Area Agencies on Aging) described high workloads, growing documentation and policy requirements, and long processing times for provider exceptions. Esperanza Gomez, a bilingual case manager with Northwest Senior and Disability Services, said recent regulatory changes increased the number of forms per assessment and the time required to complete exception requests (which she said can take 8–12 weeks), and that her caseload had grown by “40 to 50 more consumers” compared with earlier in her career.
Michael McNeil, an Adult Protective Services specialist at Northwest Senior and Disability Services, told the committee that new data systems and an accumulation of review teams and quality-assurance steps had lengthened case processing times. He said his unit’s average case-closure rate dropped and that Salem-area APS had lost 11 APS workers in the past year and a half. McNeil urged a collaborative approach to policy development and warned that “dumping it all from the top” without resourcing the field risks losing the staff who implement protections.
Nicole Palmetier and Hazel Baker of the Oregon Association of Area Agencies on Aging and Disabilities testified in support and said the bill was brought forward at the request of case managers and APS workers. Jane Ellen Whitehance, Deputy Director of Policy for the Office of Aging and People with Disabilities (within ODHS), told the committee the bill authorizes the department either to staff the task force or to contract it out, and said contracting would be done via competitive procurement and subject to state procurement rules.
Representative Elmer and committee members discussed staffing the task force and typical task-force contract sizes; department staff and witnesses estimated comparable task-force contracts often range from about $300,000 to $400,000. Committee members asked whether ODHS would participate; department staff said ODHS would have representation on the task force as written in the bill.
