OPTIONS FOR SENIORS
Comprehensive program for seniors expanding in McKeesport, Lower Burrell
Sitting with jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered in front of her in a sunlit, spacious activities room of the new Community LIFE center in McKeesport, Juanita Sweeley described in her own sunny manner what the comprehensive program for needy seniors has done for her.
Since joining two years ago, the 67year-old with arthritis, diabetes and lupus has dropped 72 pounds through exercise and other activities. She receives physical therapy and coordinated medical care that have enabled her to quit using a cane and walker. She’s made numerous friends at the center. She’s benefited from free installation of stairway banisters and bathroom grab bars in her Monroeville home.
“I’m blessed by being here,” said Ms. Sweeley, one of about 80 attendees last Thursday at a center with room to add many more participants like her.
“I used to be depressed. I felt lonely at home, and now I feel 100 percent better,” she said, rapping knuckles on the table for luck when asked how she’d feel if she had toleave her residence for a nursing home. “I wouldn’t like that,” she murmured. The whole point of Community LIFE is to postpone or avoid institutional care for people of modest means. It provides free services for people with incomes up to about $2,200 monthly who also have serious health ailments.
LIFE stands for Living Independence for the Elderly, and there are LIFE programs in 36 counties across Pennsylvania. Community LIFE and a counterpart, LIFE Pittsburgh, divide Allegheny County geographically in using Medicare and Medicaid funds in an unconventional way to serve more than 1,000 people 55 and older who join voluntarily.
Typically, Medicare helps cover physical health costs for people 65 and older who arrange their own doctors on a feefor-service basis. Medicaid offers further health assistance for those who qualify financially, plus pays for any care they receive in a nursing home if they’re deemed
frail enough.
In the LIFE programs, the nonprofit operators receive a fixed amount per client from Medicare and Medicaid to provide all-inclusive care, both in the participants’ homes and at day centers such as the one Ms. Sweeley visits. Depending on clients’ needs, they receive medical checkups, therapy, social stimulation, exercise, recreation and lunches. At home, they can be visited by program aides who help with housekeeping, personal care and anything else needed, including safety modifications.
Social workers and health care teams coordinate the wide-ranging assistance with a team approach. The participants no longer use the community doctors they have visited over the years; the trade-off is that their regular interaction with the LIFE staff provides closer monitoring that should prompt quick response to a decline in their condition.
Community LIFE has sites in Homestead, Tarentum, Wilkinsburg and McKeesport with about 575 current clients. The center that opened 17 years ago on Fifth Avenue near UPMC McKeesport was deemed too small to continue serving growing needs.
The McKeesport program moved June 12 into the remodeled site of the former Shorkey Ford dealership several miles away along Route 48/Walnut Street. It more than doubles the center’s capacity and allows a variety of new programming and health and personal care benefits, including separate quieter meeting space for those with dementia, lunches prepared fresh in a kitchen on site instead of catered, and additional exercise equipment. Hallways and rooms are wider for wheelchair access. There are plenty of windows, which the old converted warehouse across town lacked.
Meanwhile, Community LIFE is opening a fifth location June 27 at a former Save A Lot on Logans Ferry Road in Lower Burrell. With a 125-person capacity, it is designed to relieve demands on a Tarentum center.
Attendees receive free door-to-door shuttle transportation from surrounding communities, and the two new centers can handle several hundred more clients, said Community LIFE executive director Richard DiTommaso.
“We’re hoping this expansion will take care of our needs for the next five to seven years,” he said. “The expectation is that the number of elderly persons is going to increase in Pennsylvania over the next 10 to 15 years, with a higher percentage of those folks than anyone wants to think about needing long-term care services for any number of years.”
Community LIFE spent several million dollars on the two new sites, which Mr. DiTommaso said was enabled by the accumulated reserve funds from operating the program efficiently. If a LIFE program spends less per client for medical and social care than the per individual fee provided by Medicare-Medicaid, the program comes out ahead financially.
LIFE Pittsburgh, also in Allegheny County, has nearly 600 clients who receive services at four locations: Allegheny Center, the North Shore, Green Tree and McKees Rocks.
Mr. DiTommaso and Joann Gago, the CEO of LIFE Pittsburgh, said they expect their program numbers will be bolstered by creation of a new state managed-care program called Community HealthChoices. Starting Jan. 1, individuals who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare will have to choose one of three state contracted insurers to coordinate medical and long-term care help from the insurers’ newly created provider networks. Or older adults can join LIFE Pittsburgh or Community LIFE or any of the similar LIFE programs across the state.
Ms. Gago said these programs are better equipped to assist people with serious needs than managed care organizations that will be starting from scratch with new clients and provider networks. And a lot more people will learn of the existence of LIFE Pittsburgh and Community LIFE now that they’ll be told they have to make a choice.
“We believe we can say, from the standpoint of both Community LIFE and LIFE Pittsburgh, that we’ve proven in Allegheny County that we can take care of a frail, complex older adult both in the community and in their home, which is no small task,” Ms. Gago said.
McKeesport resident and Community LIFE participant Elizabeth Pallay, 95, agrees. She’s living in her own home, with no relatives nearby, while using a wheelchair. Community LIFE installed a ramp and sends an aide each day to help her in and out of bed. But she also likes visiting the center, which offers group field trips to parks and boat rides.
“I’m with people, and you get your conversation, you get your therapy, you get your lunch — a good meal,” she said. “Everybody looks out for everybody. What more could you want?”
Rather than competing with one another, Community LIFE and LIFE Pittsburgh divide clients by ZIP codes — the eastern side of the county for Community LIFE and the western half for LIFE Pittsburgh. For information about enrollment, call 1-866-419-1693 for Community Life and 412-388-8050 for LIFE Pittsburgh.
Community LIFE will hold open houses from 3-6 p.m. June 28 at 125 Logans Ferry Road, Lower Burrell,, and 3-6 p.m. June 29 at 4201 Walnut St., McKeesport.