Alice Rodriguez serves dinner to her mother, Alene Johnson, who moved in with her after being diagnosed with dementia. Aging and Disability Resource Centers in Texas offer assistance to caregivers such as Rodriguez. Next to Johnson is a doll that she refers to as her baby. Photo by Alicia Wagner Calzada

Summary:
• Aging and Disability Resource Centers offer guidance to caregivers.
• Centers cannot determine or predict whether a person is eligible for Medicaid.
• AARP is pushing to allow centers to determine Medicaid eligibility.

In her 22-year Army career, Alice L. Rodriguez learned to deal with challenges. She has a tough one now. In March, she became the primary caregiver for her 71-year-old mother, Alene Johnson. Her mom, who has dementia, lives in Rodriguez’s small suburban home in Copperas Cove.

Already raising her 12-year-old daughter, Rodriguez, 52, didn’t know what to expect from this life-altering situation. She knew she’d need help but was unsure what aid was available. A friend referred her to the Central Texas Aging and Disability Resource Center in Belton.

A single call linked her to several helpful resources: an agency that provided free sitters so she could safely leave her mom long enough to shop, dementia support for her mother and caregiver classes for herself. The services came from agencies spread over seven counties. Rodriguez might not have found them without the Aging and Disability Resource Centers (ADRC), a federal-state-local program begun in Texas about two years ago. The program now has eight centers serving 34 counties around the major metropolitan areas.

The centers, which AARP has promoted in Texas and other states, streamline the daunting chore of finding help for caregivers, and ease the frustration of bouncing from one agency to another.

“We connect them to the service [they need] so they don’t get that bounce-around syndrome,” said Martha Ramirez, access and assistance coordinator for the Bexar Area Agency on Aging.

Peggy Naugle, a caregiver specialist at the Area Agency on Aging of Central Texas, calls the ADRCs an umbrella, “all the partner agencies under one roof.”

But while ADRCs can organize many different agencies together, they can’t determine Medicaid eligibility. Medicaid helps pay for long-term care when families have exhausted their resources.

To receive Medicaid, applicants have to go first to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and then to the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services. The process can take up to 90 days.

In many cases, the delay can mean families in crisis turn to expensive nursing homes rather than less costly community care. Why? Because nursing homes are more likely than community care agencies to accept a patient before Medicaid eligibility is determined, said Amanda Fredriksen, AARP Texas senior manager for advocacy.

While pleased with the resource centers’ convenience, AARP supports legislation that would give the centers the ability to quickly approve Medicaid eligibility or be able—with a high degree of accuracy—to predict whether someone is going to be eligible.

“The idea is to create a single point of entry into the system,” said Tim Morstad, associate director of advocacy for AARP Texas.

Being able to determine whether Medicaid will cover a person’s community care is important to both individuals and the government, Fredriksen said.

“For someone to have a nursing home stay in Texas, it’s about $60,000 to $70,000 a year out of pocket,” Fredriksen said. “For a middle-income family, it’s not going to take very long to burn through their assets and have nothing left.”

Go online for a list of Aging and Disability Resource Centers in Texas.

Louis B. Parks is a freelance writer living in Wimberley, Texas.