STATEMENT OF MARY MCKINNEY, OUTREACH WORKER, Mrs. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, and the committee, I am Mrs. Mary McKinney, Outreach worker, Family Health Clinic, and this is funded through HEW under comprehensive health services. I see some of the barriers in the inner city of Albuquerque as being for the aged as a slow way to suicide, and as a community health worker, spending about 55 percent of my time with senior citizens, in one way or the other, as a direct health care service delivery, or doing blood pressure screening at the meal sites, supportive services, recreation centers, and home visiting, and giving lots of tender loving care, you become a friend to many of the aging people that you visit, or just, in one case, a daughter that cares they still exist, you do help them sometimes. Many of our senior citizens have no families. Many of our senior citizens live alone. Many of those that I have daily contact with, when you hear and see them, it seems you are reading a mystery story. As an example, there is this 83-year-old female living alone, her income is $116, before she started getting her SSI payment. Her rent was $75 a month for a very dilapidated house, plus utilities, and a telephone, the house did not even meet the city codes, and she really depended on her neighbors, her church, visiting nurses, the family health center, the mental health center, homemakers, and her caseworker, so you can see there were many agencies involved with this person. Out of that money, she paid $14 for stamps. She had impaired hearing, she was in need of a hearing aid. She also had impaired vision, and she was in need of glasses. After having a slight stroke, she had an impairment of her right hand and arm and of her right leg. She would also say, "I have been a good horse, and I have laid the foundation, and now nobody needs me, so they are going to put me in a pasture where there's no green grass." Her feeling was that she was not fit for anything, but just to die. Before she went into the hospital, she felt that if I do not go to the hospital, they are going to put me in a nursing home, and when I leave the hospital with no one there to care for me, I would end up in a nursing home to die. Senator DOMENICI. Could I stop you a minute there, please. Let us assume that this lady that you just described all of a sudden she found herself in metropolitan Albuquerque. I do not know where she came from, but she is in a house somewhere in this town. Some friend or relative finds her in the condition she is in. She has had a mild stroke. I do not know how she survived to that point, but nevertheless, where does that person go in this metropolitan area to find out what is available to her? Mrs. MCKINNEY. She had the telephone number for the family health center, and when the neighbor found her in the condition she was in, she immediately called the family health center for help, and at that point I went out to see what the condition was, and called in a physician, who could give more medical evaluation, and she was admitted into the hospital. Senator DOMENICI. But to a senior citizen, or senior citizen and friend looking for this kind of service, how do they know that a name like the family health center means anything to senior citizens? INFORMATION CENTERS NEEDED Mrs. MCKINNEY. Being an Outreach worker, part of my job is to inform the senior citizens, along with other agencies, what resources are available to them, but as I said before, I am just one person from this area that is doing outreach from the family health center, and there are many, many thousands of isolated senior citizens out there, so my plea would be to have some kind of program where you have funds to meet the needs and manpower, and not where you will give it 3 to 5 years, and then take it away, I mean a continuation of funds to reach these isolated people, centralized numbers and available persons to do followup. Senator DOMENICI. My question is directed at this. Should not there be an appropriate office that is directly related to, by name and total dissemination of information as a place for the elderly, or the senior citizen to go to, or that someone could go from to find out what it is that is available in their community if for nothing else, than in the area of health care. There is no such facility, as I take it. Mrs. MCKINNEY. Not yet. Senator DOMENICI. It is being established? Mrs. MCKINNEY. Yes. Senator DOMENICI. Are you aware of it sufficiently to talk about it a minute? Mrs. MCKINNEY. No: I am not. Senator DOMENICI. Who is? Mrs. MENZIE. One of the mandates for the area aging agency is to establish a total information and referral service with followup, and it is mandated, and also to bring together the information of referral services of Social Security information, the Federal information, all existing information of referral services in your community. It is mandated that we do it. We are just getting off the ground. Senator DOMENICI. What will it be called? Mrs. MENZIE. We will call it Senior Army Service of the AAA. It is the total network of services in the community. Senator DOMENICI. Fine. Go ahead. Mrs. MCKINNEY. Just to reemphasize the problem, we do have a community council that has a lot of referrals and information and resources available to them, but what happens to the senior citizens, it is not somebody there to take them to their resources. How do we get it to them if they are isolated in their homes? After this lady was discharged from the hospital, she came home, but as I said, there were a lot of agencies taking care of her. Her son was in California, and I called him, and he took her there, so it was kind of a success story, in the sense of somebody coming for her. PREVENTIVE HEALTH PROGRAM Without a preventive health program for the senior citizens. I can see that we will be slowly draining and fading away, and I would plead at this time for some type of preventive program here in the State of New Mexico for the senior citizens, because we do not have anything like that right now. Living alone, some of the barriers of living alone, low income, education, I would like to see a service for the senior citizens that prevents hospitalization as a last resort. Many of our citizens are babysitters to earn extra income, which is a problem for them to get to the sites, or for other activities that would give them strength, or for giving medical services at their need. Social and economic problems are varied for our senior citizens. There are many that are very lonely, and there is lots of discrimination for our senior citizens because of their aging. This causes physical and emotional pain. Legal services are also a barrier for our senior citizens. Agencies joining together, as one big band, to let you know that we want our services and funds, in the State of New Mexico, for our senior citizens, this is what we are working toward. We will try to accomplish a common goal to get the highest quality of care for our senior citizens in the State of New Mexico, and given the funds, not as a token, not as a pacifier, but we can make it happen. As a community health worker, my goal has been to the community, but I find myself being an advocacy in the wind, including health education, and sharing with them the things that they need, sometimes just to read a letter, sometimes it is just tender loving care, sometimes it is just a knock on the door and a hold of the hand. Relocation has been a great barrier for some of our senior citizens. Taking them away from the community, putting them far away from their friends and from their services is not good. Without transportation, they are completely lost, so they fold their hands, they close their door, and they pull the blinds, and they sit and wait to die. Many of our senior citizens need glasses and cannot get them. Many times I have spent hours on the phone trying to call around, trying to get help for hearing aids, glasses, and transportation, and again, I hit a blank wall. Are the elderly just being given a pacifier to quiet them down, or are we going to see them progress on their own? Senator DOMENICI. I thank you very much. I wish we had time to continue on, but let me thank everyone that has appeared. We are going to go to four or five people that want to make some comments from the floor. Let me thank a few other people. I hope you all understand our problem with time. I think perhaps some of you do not quite understand the nature of this hearing, so let me take a few minutes to tell you about it. The Senate Special Committee on Aging is chaired by Senator Church from Idaho. It has a number of subcommittees, a subcommittee headed by Senator Muskie from Maine is the subcommittee that is having this hearing. He is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Health Care for the Elderly. I want to express in the record my appreciation to him for granting us permission to have the hearing here, and in particular for his approval of my chairing the hearing. It is a very vital part in regard to making strides for our senior citizens. This special committee has emphasized this problem as it was never emphasized before. You have contributed by your efforts here today. We thank you for it, and we certainly think that between this morning and this afternoon in Santa Fe, we will get some constructive ideas to help move our country ahead. Now, Mr. Murphy, president of the North Valley Senior Citizens' Association, has submitted a written statement. We thank you, Mr. Murphy, and it will be made a part of the record.1 We have about 10 minutes, so we are going to ask those people who wanted to comment, to do so briefly. The first person from the floor that we will hear from is John Chapman of Albuquerque. He was here earlier. Perhaps he could not stay. I think his comments would have been in the area of nursing homes, though I am not sure. And then we have the name of Mrs. Sarah Sorenson of Albuquerque. Mrs. Sorenson, did you have a question or want to comment? STATEMENT OF SARAH SORENSON, ALBUQUERQUE, N. MEX. Mrs. SORENSON. I had a comment on exploitation. We want minibuses to help us, to help the blind, and the disabled. They cannot get on those buses. We need buses with platforms to pick us up and bring us to doctors, to hospitals, and stores, and so on. Further, we should like to have a system of "Dial and Ride," a system adopted in other cities in the United States-Ann Arbor, Mich., and Sausalito, Calif., and others-whereby elderly people can call for a ride, be picked up at their door and returned. We already have 6,000 petitions requesting this service for Albuquerque. As senior citizens, we are taxpayers, and we find we have to pay the fees for the doctors, we have to pay for drugs, for food, and other expenses. We live on a fixed income, and we cannot afford to face all those difficult problems. Therefore, we urge you to get us minibuses so we can get to our centers. Now, other cities have them. In Maryland, they pick up the senior citizens at 10, and bring them to the centers, and come back for them at 4, and bring them home, and I think in Albuquerque, we should follow that example. Senator DOMENICI. Thank you very much. We will next hear from Mrs. Beryl Beal of Albuquerque, N. Mex. STATEMENT OF BERYL BEAL, ALBUQUERQUE, N. MEX. Mrs. BEAL. A lot of our senior citizens would like to be independent, a lot of them have had to sell their homes because they have not had the money to live on, their Social Security is not adequate. Now, in July, our stamps will go up again for senior citizens. There will be a raise of $3 per person, and what will that $3 buy, when $10 is added to your stamp program. Our people are hungry; they do not eat. They come to our meal site, you bring them in wheelchairs, the best you can do, or in cars. Many of 1 See appendix 2, item 5, p. 1148. them will not go to a doctor, because they have not gotten the money, not even with Medicare. Subsidies and the SSI program is not adequate. They do not want charity. They want to be independent, and transportation is the best thing. Senator DOMENICI. I understand that you know from experience about what you speak, because you are an Outreach worker in South Valley. Mrs. BEAL. Yes, well, our men and women that we have that are covered with Social Security, when they get a raise from Social Security, and their husband has died, and is a veteran, whenever they get a $10 raise in Social Security they are cut off in the veterans' pension, so really, you get no raise, you get nothing. We have some members that are really coming out, and we cannot help them. It is a big problem. Senator DOMENICI. Thank you very much. We will now hear from Mrs. Peggy Mallony, Albuquerque, N. Mex. STATEMENT OF PEGGY MALLONY, ALBUQUERQUE, N. MEX. Mrs. MALLONY. I just would like to make a comment, not for just myself, but for other people in the same shape. Because of other payments that we knew we were getting from the SSI, we were cut off completely, and that cut off the Medicaid services. I personally have been fighting, not fighting, put discussing with them my situation since February, and to date I still have not received any more supplemental income, or my Medicaid card. I am having to buy my medicine, and I am at a point where I cannot do it on what I get. Senator DOMENICI. You are referring to the conversion from the old Social Security rule to the new income supplement payments, and that old computer problem they have been having? Mrs. MALLONY. They told me the computer will not accept the data that they are putting into it. Senator DOMENICI. Have you been in touch with them? Senator DOMENICI. I am not suggesting that they are not doing their job properly, but we do appreciate your problem. However, we do not know how to straighten up the computer problems that they have been having very quickly. Mrs. MALLONY. They even tried to bypass the system, and I still have not gotten any results, and I thank you for letting me talk about that. Senator DOMENICI. You are most welcome. We will now hear from Leroy Smith, Lovington, N. Mex. He wanted to speak on the nursing home situation. STATEMENT OF LEROY SMITH, LOVINGTON, N. MEX. Mr. SMITH. Yes, I would. I am the president of the New Mexico Health Care Facility Association. A great many things have been said here today, and a great many good programs are going on in New Mexico, but I would like to say |