The Legislature finds and declares that:
(a) Long-term care services in California include an uncoordinated array of categorical programs offering medical, social, and other support services that are funded and administered by a variety of federal, state, and local agencies and are replete with gaps, duplication, and little or no emphasis on the specific concerns of individual consumers.
(b) Although the need for a coordinated continuum of long-term care services has long been apparent, numerous obstacles prevent its development, including inflexible and inconsistent funding sources, economic incentives that encourage the placement of consumers in the highest levels of care, lack of coordination between aging, health, and social service agencies at both state and local levels, and inflexible state and federal regulations.
(c) The office of the Legislative Analyst and others have pointed out that California’s systems of service delivery in a number of areas are dysfunctional, due to the fragmentation of responsibility and funding for interrelated services. Principles proposed by the Legislative Analyst to guide the restructuring of these systems include recognizing program linkages, coordinating service delivery mechanisms, removing barriers to innovation, and instilling financial incentives to promote prevention and coordination.
(d) It is both more efficient and more humane to restructure long-term care services so that duplicative and confusing eligibility criteria, assessments, intake forms, and service limitations will not inhibit consumer satisfaction, impede improvements in consumer health status, and result in the ineffective use of resources.
(e) There is a growing interest in community-directed systems of funding and organizing the broad array of health, support, and community living services needed by persons of all ages with disabilities.
(f) It is in the interest of those in need of long-term care services, and the state as a whole, to develop a long-term care system that provides dignity and maximum independence for the consumer, creates home and community based alternatives to unnecessary out-of-home placement, and is cost effective.
(Added by Stats. 1995, Ch. 875, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 1996.)