Gov. Gregoire addresses the Washington Health Care Association annual convention

May 20, 2008

*As Written

Good morning, and thank you, Rick for the kind introduction.

I�m pleased to be here today, and of course, I�m glad to see Gary looking fit and happy as usual.

In case some of you don�t know it, Gary used to work for me.

But now he calls me up to make a speech, and I work for him!

How does that work?

But Gary couldn�t have picked a better place to work (except in my Cabinet, of course).

I have a lot of respect for the owners, operators and employees of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in this room.

I know you all work very hard every single day to provide your residents with decent care and better lives.

I very much like that one of your stated values is to �give back to the generation who paved the way for us to become who we are today."

That�s exactly the value I felt when it came time for my own Mom to live out her days in a nursing facility in Olympia � Mother Joseph�s. And my Mom received excellent care -- for which I will always be grateful.

I also am the legal guardian of my cousin, Ronnie, who has developmental disabilities. I�m pleased and grateful that we found a place for him to live a full life in a long-term care facility here in Spokane.

I know the business of providing long-term care isn�t easy, and the challenges are many.

For example, a recent Kaiser Foundation study confirmed what many of you already know up close and personal.

It�s hard to recruit good employees, and it will get harder. I�m pleased to note that we�ve been able to help by increasing wages for your workers.

The Kaiser study finds that given the country�s aging population, we�ll need close to 200,000 more workers a year to keep up with demand.

But I know we�ll all figure how to meet this challenge and others just as pressing � like rapidly rising costs.

Why? Because it�s our moral obligation to take care of those who raised us and took care of us. And if that isn�t enough of a reason, it�s because reality demands that we must.

We in Washington have one of the fastest growing aging populations in the nation � By 2020, we will have doubled the number of seniors who lived here back in �02.

There will be about one million seniors living in Washington by 2020.

So we all face some heavy lifting in the years to come to make sure this huge population of seniors gets the care they deserve...

...From the right long-term care�to chronic-disease management�to prevention of falls and other hazards common to seniors.

I�m proud of what we�ve been able to accomplish in the past three years.

I created the Long-Term-Care Task Force in 2005 to address key issues for seniors.

The Task Force provided a number of recommendations, some of which became part of our �Aging in Place Legislation� I signed a few months ago.

I especially want to highlight the additional support we provided to family caregivers, and the new funding for a program to prevent a big problem among seniors � falls that disable and even kill them.

These types of programs make best use of our long-term care resources and allow us to better support your facilities when they are most needed, including additional reimbursement money this year.

In fact, since 2005, we have provided more than $270 million in additional support to long-term care. This includes rate increases for nursing homes and other facilities, and for home-care workers.

I know all of you strongly believe that patient safety has to be the basis of the care you give. Your reputations and livelihoods depend on it.

Consistent with this ethic, we have strengthened licensing standards for health care providers and increased funding to investigate patient complaints.

We�re also developing an on-line data base that lists for providers and pharmacists all the prescription drugs their patients are receiving.

With this information, we can reduce the risk of adverse drug reactions, particularly for our seniors taking multiple medications.

I know that all of you remain concerned about the Medicaid reimbursement rate. I�m grateful that you have been willing to partner with the state to serve low-income seniors, and we never want to take your good will for granted.

I also want to thank you for bringing forward legislation that I signed that assures a more rational and cost-effective use of the limited state dollars available for long-term care capital construction.

You were real partners on that issue.

Everyone hopes to grow old in their own house, but not everybody can.

Nursing homes and other facilities aren�t for everybody, but they are a critical part of our spectrum of needs to serve our senior citizens.

I am very committed to working close with you in the years ahead as partners to make sure you remain healthy and viable for seniors who need your services.

Thank you, and I�d be happy to take any questions you might have.