Under Connecticut law, a home health aide can spend all day caring for you, but if you need help taking your pills, you'll need a nurse to come give them to you.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy next week will recommend changing that, a move his administration says could save the state millions of dollars and remove a barrier that keeps people from moving out of nursing homes.
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"It appears that DSS is taking a step backwards from the way Medicaid has been interpreted," state Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein said. "These kids are supposed to get whatever medical services are available that will allow them to reach their highest levels of functioning."
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Advocates for low-income residents want the state to create a new health program for poor adults who don't get Medicaid coverage, and they say lawmakers must commit to doing so this year to make it work as part of federal health reform.
"We should take this opportunity and we need to take it now," said Jane McNichol, executive director of the Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticut.
Read moreGov. Dannel P. Malloy secured Connecticut's investment in a major genetic research initiative Monday -- but not before one more partisan debate.
Sen. Edith G. Prague, D-Columbia, returned to the State Capitol on Friday for the first time since her stroke on Christmas, showing no ill effects and pronouncing herself a candidate for re-election this fall.
"I am running for my seat. There's no question," Prague said after attending a press conference on home health care. "Too many important things are happening. I have to be here."
Spurred by a new study showing the high costs of treating the mentally ill in prison, the Malloy administration is searching for ways to treat nonviolent offenders outside the prison system.
It costs Connecticut nearly double to both incarcerate and treat an offender with serious mental illnesses, compared with the price of treatment alone, according to a new academic study that analyzed social service and correction trends in 2006 and 2007.
Despite the down economy, the need for home care workers is booming. But experts worry about finding enough people to take jobs that often come with low pay, no benefits, and a history of being devalued.
Read moreThere's still nearly two years before the major pieces of federal health reform roll out, but for the planners designing Connecticut's health insurance exchange, one of the central pieces of the law, the time line is much tighter.
State regulators have disciplined Waterbury Hospital after unannounced visits found multiple violations of care standards, including the continued use of psychiatric patient beds with side rails in the days after a patient used one to attempt suicide by hanging. The patient ultimately died.
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DSS Commissioner Roderick Bremby likes to illustrate the balance of human and technological solutions with a story: If he told people to take down a tree and handed them a pocket knife, they'd have trouble. He could send in 10 more people with pocket knives. Or he could get them a chainsaw. The problem is, what happens before the chainsaws are available?
Read moreDCF spends $16.4 million a year on mental and behavioral health services, a sum that translates to about $30,000 for each child. But one of every five children has private health insurance that is not covering what their doctors say is needed, leaving the state to pick up the tab. That's about to change.
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A three-year investigation has determined that a tenured professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center fabricated and falsified data, the health center announced Wednesday. The health center has started dismissal proceedings against Dipak K. Das, director of the Cardiovascular Research Center and a professor in the department of surgery. It has notified 11 scientific journals that have published studies Das has conducted, frozen all externally funded research in his lab and declined $890,000 in federal grants that he was awarded.
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The state Department of Social Services has failed to employ enough workers to process Medicaid applications in the timeframe required by federal law, leaving thousands of low-income residents without access to health care coverage, legal aid attorneys alleged in a federal class action lawsuit filed Monday.
Farmington -- Gov. Dannel P. Malloy marked his first anniversary in office today by finalizing the deal for the state to invest $291 million in a genetics research institute at the University of Connecticut Health Center.
The state's partnership with The Jackson Laboratory, a world-renowned research center in Maine, is an attempt to ride the field of personalized medicine into a new economy.
"The very thing that was buying me time was taken away," said Susan Block, 72, of West Hartford, a healthy, avid cyclist, gardener and yoga instructor before her diagnosis. "The very thing that was giving me hope was withdrawn."
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Mice are central to The Jackson Laboratory, to its history, its financing and its role in understanding human diseases. But now Jackson is planning to build an institute in Connecticut, and in doing so, plans to take its work beyond mice, to play a more direct role in translating genetic research into tests and therapies for human diseases.
Read more"Children with autism and other developmental disabilities are probably one of the most underserved populations in the state of Connecticut," state Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein said. "We need all kinds of services and we need ways of paying for these services."
Read moreWith about 4,500 homeless people in Connecticut on any given night -- and more than 636,000 nationwide -- advocates have struggled for decades to find the best way to help. Now, a surprisingly fierce dispute is taking place over the best way to assist the homeless once they've left the emergency shelter.
Read morePauline Bouffard says her son used to hold his arms out every time she visited him at the state-run residential facility for the developmentally disabled in Meriden, signaling his desire to go home. Now he lives in a private, community-based group home, and she says he's not in such a rush to leave. A new legislative study has concluded that the state shift more disabled to group homes.
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State officials are developing a plan to dramatically reshape the state's long-term care system, just as demand for it is expected to skyrocket. The effort -- referred to as "right-sizing," or balancing the system -- is aimed at allowing more seniors and people with disabilities to live in community settings rather than institutions.
Read moreStephen F. Cashman, chairman of the elections enforcement commission
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THE MINIMUM WAGE
Connecticut's hourly minimum wage of $8.25 is one of the highest in the nation, trailing Washington at $9.04, Oregon at $8.80 and Vermont at $8.46.
Five of the six New England states exceed the federal minimum of $7.25. The exception is New Hampshire, whose minimum is the same as the feds.
Connecticut is one of 18 states with a minimum higher than the federal standard. Twenty-thrree are at the federal level, four are below it and five have no minimum wage.
Ten states have a minimum wage indexed to the cost of living.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
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