WHO – Wisconsin Homecare Organization

Position paper on Wisconsin Quality Home Care Authority

Wisconsin Homecare Organization

Opposed

April 2009

The budget bill seeks to create an entity called the Wisconsin Quality Home Care Authority. The entity poses a number of policy questions that are more appropriately addressed in a separate bill, with a public hearing, and not as a provision of the budget bill. The Wisconsin Homecare Organization, therefore, requests that this provision be removed from the budget bill.

Policy questions as yet unanswered regarding the authority:

1. In what sense does the authority address quality of care?

The authority, as it has been implemented elsewhere and envisioned in the budget bill, sets no standards, publishes no best practices, has no investigative authority, has no ability to sanction and, in general, has no method of setting, enforcing or assuring any level of quality of care.

Oversight and supervision are crucial goals, but this commission does not seem to be the proper, or even a possible, method of achieving those goals.

This is an important public policy issue that deserves a full hearing.

2. Do the people of Wisconsin want the government to compete with private enterprise?

The authority, as it has been implemented elsewhere and envisioned in the budget bill, appears to provide only services that are very similar to the services already provided by personal care businesses across Wisconsin. That is: They connect people who need care with people who can provide care, and then handle paperwork, such as employment and insurance documentation.

Because the authority would be funded by the state, and because the governor would appoint its board, the authority would create– in essence — a business competition between the state and personal care businesses. Worse, the competition would be on an uneven playing field, as most personal care agencies are small businesses that cannot compete with the state, either for employees or for clients.

This, too, is an important public policy issue that deserves a full hearing.

Action request:

The Wisconsin Homecare Organization asks the Wisconsin Legislature to remove from the budget bill the provision that would create Wisconsin Quality Home Care Authority.