Advice about caregiver rights at a PACE center from someone knowledgeable about this program?

igloo572 - No, you did not understand me correctly. Maybe it would help if you read it again?
I'm not going into any more details on this because I'm tired of writing reports and it appears I'm not very good at explaining myself or you are not very good at reading. Either way I wish you well.

Here is a link that explains what I have been looking for and it's in great detail. You may want to read it before giving anyone else advice about PACE policies.

Federal Register / Vol. 71, No. 236 / Friday, December 8, 2006 / Rules and Regulations
42 CFR Parts 460, 462, 466, 473, and 476
Medicare and Medicaid Programs;
Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the
Elderly (PACE); Program Revisions; Final
Rule
http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Health-Plans/pace/downloads/finalreg.pdf

Art - So if I'm reading this post & your other one correctly, your mom has been enrolled in a PACE program now by her own choice for OVER A YEAR now & your upset because you are not allowed access at the PACE center whenever you choose & they won't answer your questions as to services provided to your satisfaction?

PACE is all about providing services for the enrolled elder. Mom should get a statement from CMS at to what services/codes were provided to the elder. My mom got these about every 3 weeks from CMS for her hospice care & I mention this because hospice is a lot like PACE in how the benefits are structured. PACE is not about providing a place for the caregiver to hang out or socialize at. PACE is paid a set capitation rate for the enrollee; now a caregiver coming over to accompany their elder on a field trip or a luncheon that totally makes sense to happen on occasion. But is sounds like you have overstayed your welcome. There are all sorts of HIPPA issues for the other participants at PACE in having non-employees hanging around. Apparently you also have creeped out the employees. All these are red flags for management. If mom has continued to participate at the center despite whatever you have done, that is an indication that mom is not being retaliated against.

For PACE by us in NOLA (Benson Center), that I wrote about in another post, well the PACE vans are filled with elderly (& not their family) that were picked up at their homes or other Catholic Charities living centers. I'd bet some of these don't even have caregivers living with them. Whatever the situation, PACE is for the elder and not the caregiver. You need to find something else to do with the time that mom is at PACE. Believe me there are oodles of caregivers on this site, who would love to have their mom taken to a full-day comprehensive healthcare & activity center at no cost to them or their mom and allow them to have free time during the day to go back to school, have a part-time job, read a book or make a martini (gin & dirty) without being on-call caregiving for a few hours.

And not to sound harsh, your mom is the one that qualified and enrolled for the PACE Medicare & Medicaid benefit. She apparently is competent & cognitive enough to do this if she has been there receiving services and participating in PACE for over a year. If she didn't like it, she could disenroll at any point in time. But she hasn't.

I would caution you in all this to not make matters worse that could entail PACE contacting APS to do a fiduciary review on mom's financials or do a living environment suitability review of the home or something else sticky - like call the police to have you removed from premises or arrested. If you are in anyway dependent on mom to have housing; pay for utilities, or provide for groceries, etc. you would be best served by dialing back your complaints to and presence at PACE. Try to make this more about mom and less about you.

I'm a family caregiver for my mom. When a person enrolls the caregiver is supposed to be allowed to attend the enrollment process which takes 3 days to complete.
Day one: I show up and they told me I didn't need to be there because she was just taking a tour and eating lunch that day.
Day two: I show up and they tell me the same thing, she's just going to meet some staff and visit with people.
Day Three: I call and ask what they are doing that day because I can't afford to waste gas if they are just going to tell me to go home. They said she was still taking the tour and meeting staff and participants, so I didn't go.

Little did I know, she was signing papers and enrolling but the center wouldn't let me past the front door. For the next five months they didn't follow through on what they said they would do, wouldn't put anything in writing so I started asking questions and making phone calls. That was over a year ago. Now they are restricting my access and won't let me visit with her or the other people I got to know over thee past year because they claim several employees filed complaints against me for "uneasy feelings" and "excessive loitering." Now I am on restricted access and I can only attend appointments and IDT meetings. They encourage family members to participate and be active with everything but now they say I can't visit with moms friends and people I have gotten to know. On top of all this, they won't let me read the policy manual that says they can do this. It's like a detention center, not a PACE center.

What are you having issues with ? Are you a family caregiver or an independent caregiver? Without knowing more about the problem, it's difficult to answer.

Arthur, tell us what the problem is at the PACE. What services is the client not receiving? What rights does the caregiver want to exercise?