The Michigan Department of Community Health (DCH) has placed direct-care workforce issues at the core of its efforts to improve the quality of long-term services and supports and offer a full array of options.

The department used two federal tools — each developed separately — that were designed to inform and influence state long-term care activities.

State Profile Grant

Michigan is one of 10 states that received a State Profile Grant (SPG) from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2008. Each state is responsible for writing a report that surveys all publicly funded long-term care supports and services, to

• identify gaps and opportunities to improve coordination, and
• work with CMS to identify benchmarks that measure progress of long-term care reform across states.

Michigan’s State Profile Consumer Stakeholder Group concluded that the state’s entire long-term care workforce should be included in the catalogue of current conditions, which is a supplement to the CMS state profiling model.

“Collectively, the diverse Council wanted the report to reflect the importance that direct-care workers and others play in delivering quality services and making options really available,” said consumer group member Sarah Slocum, Michigan’s State Long-Term Care Ombudsman. “We cannot advise or plan the future without paying attention to the workforce.”

Workforce Measurements

To catalogue the workforce, the state turned to another CMS-funded initiative, the National Direct Service Workforce (DSW) Resource Center. The Resource Center supports state Medicaid agencies, policymakers, researchers, consumers, employers and other stakeholders’ efforts to improve the recruitment and retention of direct-care workers.

At the request of many states, the DSW Resource Center developed a set of standard workforce measurements for states. These data elements were designed to measure trends and progress in an effort to aid policymakers.

The Michigan Profile of Publicly Funded Long-Term Care Supports and Services (pdf) uses the DSW Resource Center recommendations to lay out available information on size, compensation, and stability of the state’s workforce by setting and job title. While significant information was available, the report points to the substantial gaps in the data available about the workforce.

DCH efforts are now focused on building an information system to more fully capture the recommended workforce measurements to inform and support state initiatives to improve quality and the array of service options.

– by Hollis Turnham