Miami University

How has Ohio responded to the Olmstead decision?

Olmstead is a Supreme Court decision which found that it is discriminatory to provide institutional care to individuals who could live in less restrictive settings.

A gubernatorial executive order in June 2000 created a task force known as Ohio ACCESS to undertake a comprehensive review of Ohio’s systems of care for people with disabilities, and to make recommendations for improvements by 2006 (Fox-Grage, Folkemer, Straw, & Hansen, 2002). The taskforce, comprised of representatives from a number of state departments, consumers, and consumer representatives, focused on people with physical and developmental disabilities, with the priority recommendation ensuring that people live with dignity in the setting that they prefer.

The ACCESS task force made the following recommendations to improve long-term care services for Ohioans with disabilities.

• Match capacity with the demand for community-based services.
• Generate and sustain the necessary resources to expand community services.
• Overcome federal policy constraints such as the federal Medicaid waiver.
• Address the health care workforce shortage by creating a public-private workgroup; conducting a labor market analysis; studying wage and rate issues; creating demonstration projects to examine career ladders, scholarship opportunities, and payments to family members and other informal caregivers on a controlled basis; examining alternatives to the traditional provision of long-term care by looking at scope of practice issues, assistive technology and the increased use if independent service providers.
• Overcome policy constraints on self-sufficiency and personal and family responsibility by providing better information and assistance for consumers and their caregivers.

For more information see Ohio Long-Term Care Factbook by L.D. Murdoch and contributors and refer to The Ohio Access Plan for People with Disabilities on the Ohio Department of Aging’s website.