Caroline Pearson | Nexus Insights

Squeezed: Majority of Aging Adults Are Facing a Crisis Virtual Briefing

May 11, 2023

The “forgotten middle” represents more than 11 million older adults who will need healthcare and housing in the next 10 years but won’t qualify for Medicaid to help alleviate increasing costs. Nexus Fellow Caroline Peterson of the Peterson Center on Healthcare joins The SCAN Foundation for a virtual briefing on this critical topic to provide insights on how the intersections of housing insecurity, healthcare access and affordability, and available community services affect older adults; and discuss the urgent need for action.

Register on Zoom right here.

If You Hated 2020, You’re Going to Despise Old Age: A Nexus Op-Ed

April 21, 2023

It’s safe to say that none of us want to experience life as it was lived in 2020 ever again.

We missed our friends and family during the era of “social distancing.” In the short term, most of us could handle the loneliness. But as the pandemic wore on, we found that Zoom meetings and virtual happy hours, at first novel and fun, were a very poor substitute for authentic human connection and became tiresome and annoying. We grew frustrated with the monotony of a limited life. Netflix binges, family game nights and jigsaw puzzles eventually lost their appeal.

Most of us are tired of rehashing what life was like during pandemic lockdowns, but there are important lessons to be learned. Sadly, not everyone has the option for a life filled with purpose, autonomy, and variety. What we experienced during 2020 is the life many older adults living alone in their homes or institutional care settings experience every day – both before and after the pandemic. COVID lockdowns gave younger Americans an unpleasant taste of the “medicine” that millions of elders swallow every day.

We learned lessons during the height of COVID that we can — and should — apply to older Americans. The time is now!

What would it take to have older people live where they wish without becoming socially isolated? What would it take for older people to be viewed as valuable members of a society that desperately needs their lived experiences and knowledge? What would it take for those receiving care in congregate settings to have lives filled with purpose, meaningful relationships, and, dare we say it, joy?

Read the full article, If You Hated 2020, You’re Going to Despise Old Age, authored by Nexus Insights’ Fellows Jill Vitale-Aussem, Caroline Pearson, and Dr. Bill Thomas, on LinkedIn, and join the #NexusVoices conversation.

What do you think we have learned? How can we improve the future of aging in America?

About the Authors

Jill Vitale-Aussem, President & CEO of Christian Living Communities, and Nexus Fellow, has over two decades of boots-on-the-ground senior living leadership experience, transforming organizations by creating age-positive, ability-inclusive community cultures of growth, belonging and purpose.

Caroline Pearson’s deep understanding of public and private health insurance informs new financing models that leverage healthcare dollars to fund non-medical support for older adults. Caroline is the Executive Director of The Peterson Center on Healthcare, and a Nexus Fellow.

Dr. Bill Thomas, Nexus Fellow, founder of The Eden Alternative, The Green House Project and Minka is a serial creator of scalable models and an innovator in the field of housing and services for older people. He brings to Nexus his belief that people, properly equipped and prepared, can solve the most difficult problems of living.

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Sticker Shock: Running Up that Hospital Bill – Caroline Pearson at ViVE 2023

March 28, 2023

Healthcare spending accounted for 18.3% of the nation’s GDP in 2021, and is projected to reach nearly 20% by 2030; and $433.2 billion of that spend came out-of-pocket by the American consumer. With few understanding their benefits, co-insurance, or provider networks, and lack of price transparency, medical billing complexity, and unexpected costs it is no small wonder the consumer gets surprised with bills. Enter the No Surprises Act and a hospital price transparency rule requiring the public posting prices. Has it worked? A recent report showed that 2 million potential surprise bills were avoided in the first two months; and, perhaps because more than 55% of workers were enrolled in high-deductible health plans, consumers are beginning to ask questions and push back on hospital bills. However, less than 25% of hospitals are in compliance and enforcement is virtually non-existent. Join these experts as they discuss the state of healthcare economic affairs, next steps for CMS alternative payment models, and emerging industry payment innovation to achieve value for the buck.

MODERATOR

Ben Leonard, Health Tech Reporter, POLITICO

SPEAKERS

Caroline Pearson, Executive Director, Peterson Center on Healthcare

Chris Severn, CEO & Co-Founder, Turquoise Health

Niall Brennan, Chief Analytics and Privacy Officer, Clarify Health

Caroline Pearson Executive Director The Peterson Center on Healthcare

Caroline Pearson Named as Executive Director for Peterson Center on Healthcare

January 17, 2023

Exciting news for Nexus Fellow Caroline Pearson. She has been named as the new Executive Director for The Peterson Center on Healthcare.

“Caroline is a gifted leader who never hesitates to roll up her sleeves and do the hard work,” said Anne Tumlinson, CEO of ATI Advisory, and a Nexus Fellow. “It’s been a joy to work with her in various ways throughout her career, and especially as she’s tackled policy challenges in the senior care sector. I know she’ll continue to make significant contributions in this next chapter.”

“Caroline is the perfect choice to lead the Peterson Center,” said Nexus Fellow David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. “She has worked for over two decades to improve the US healthcare system by taking on challenging policy issues. She led our important research on the “forgotten middle” of older adults who are too wealthy for Medicaid but too poor to afford the current mix of senior housing options. I can’t wait to see what she does at the Peterson Center.”

Pearson, who started the new position in early January, is leading the Center’s portfolio of initiatives and grants, to help “transform U.S. healthcare into a high-performance system by finding innovative solutions that improve quality and lower costs,” according to an announcement from the Center. She brings deep policy expertise across a wide range of critical areas, including Medicare, Medicaid, private health insurance, prescription drugs, the Affordable Care Act, and aging issues.

“I am deeply honored to join the remarkable team at the Peterson Center on Healthcare to advance its mission to improve healthcare through lower costs and higher quality outcomes,” said Pearson.

Pearson previously was the Senior Vice President for Healthcare Strategy at NORC at the University of Chicago, a research organization that has broken new ground into the unmet needs of the “forgotten middle” when it comes to affording senior housing. Before NORC, she spent 14 years at Avalere Health as the Senior V.P. of Policy and Strategy, where she worked with Fortune 500 companies, patient groups and other healthcare stakeholders to solve complex business and policy challenges.

“I am so proud of the Health Care Strategy team we have built at NORC at the University of Chicago and the important research that they will continue on issues of policy, aging, and care delivery,” she said.
“We are very pleased to welcome Caroline, whose strategic vision and data-driven approach will bolster the Center’s work to lower costs and improve outcomes in U.S. healthcare,” said Michael A. Peterson, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “Caroline’s comprehensive understanding of the complex healthcare delivery ecosystem and her track record of identifying, validating and scaling innovative solutions make her a perfect match for the Center’s mission.”

Read the full announcement at Peterson Center on Healthcare

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Caregiving Navigation Hubs: A Critical Resource for Older Adults and their Families

January 3, 2023

Coordinating caregiving for aging loved ones is a complicated and frustrating task for families. And the problem is growing.

According to a recent article in Next Avenue, “It generally starts with a crisis: Your parent shows signs of dementia…or is about to be discharged from a serious hospital stay…or requires help with daily activities of living. What do you do? Where do you turn? It’s the little-discussed part of long-term care that leaves many of the nation’s 22 million family caregivers for older loved ones bereft and befuddled.”

“We’re failing tens of thousands of older adults and their families,” said Bob Kramer, Founder and Fellow of Nexus Insights.

Nexus Insights is a think tank advancing the well-being of older adults through innovative models of housing, community and healthcare.

In early 2022, Nexus Insights brought together long-term care providers, caregiver advocates, tech-driven startups and policy experts in its first ‘Nexus Voices’ salon to discuss how to help older adults and their caregivers better navigate the complex and fragmented array of long-term care and aging services. The result was a report released in September 2022, “Where Am I, Where Do I Go: The Missing Entry Point to Long-Term Care Solutions for Older Adults and Their Caregivers.”

This report was the subject of the Next Avenue article, written by Richard Eisenberg.

Eisenberg spoke to several of the report’s authors, including Anne Tumlinson, CEO of ATI Advisory and a Nexus Fellow. “The primary challenge that most of my peers and friends and family were experiencing was entering into that phase of their lives when they were suddenly thrust into family caregiving roles and feeling like there’s no place to go,” Tumlinson said. “In the best-case scenario they’re getting a hospital discharge planner handing them a long list of organizations who are like, ‘Good luck. Here you go.'”

Caroline Pearson, another report author concurred. Pearson, formerly the Senior VP of Health Care Strategy at NORC at the University of Chicago, and now the Executive Director for The Peterson Center on Healthcare, and a Nexus Fellow. “Unfortunately, most people find themselves in these urgent scenarios that are sort of a call for help unexpectedly,” she said.

In fact, Nexus recently partnered with NORC to conduct a survey on this issue. The survey showed that 1 in 4 older adults needed long-term care services for themselves or a loved one in just the previous 12 months. It also echoed the report’s assertion that caregivers experience frustration and anxiety during the process.

The Nexus Voices report offers a powerful solution, according to the article, “A national, independent, trusted hub system of caregiving navigators who would be accessible to everyone and serve as a central doorway to long-term care services and supports.”

“For every single family to be creating a long-term care service delivery system is very inefficient from a societal standpoint and an economy standpoint,” said Tumlinson.

The solution would have to be national in scope. “There was broad-based agreement [among the salon participants] that creating the kind of awareness to make these hubs as visible as your local drugstore or post office was going to take a national effort, and a level of funding that was probably going to have to be federally driven,” said Kramer.

According to the article, a local example of such a hub was launched earlier this year in Ohio. The NaviGuide program, created by United Church Homes in Ohio, offers these types of services to its 166 clients. The program was inspired by a family crisis for its creator Terry Spitznagel, senior executive vice president and chief growth officer for United Church Homes. Spitnagel said, “I’ve been in senior services for three decades, but I just fell apart trying to help my father navigate the aging journey. I couldn’t manage it.”

The article sees the NaviGuide program as a positive step in the right direction. “If programs like United Church Homes’ NaviGuide are proven financially viable or federal or state governments earmark money for caregiving navigators, you may start seeing these experts pop up around the country.”

In fact, other recent reports echo the Nexus recommendations.

“There are real opportunities to move forward on this,” said Kramer. “But it’s going to take keeping the issue in the limelight and building momentum and seizing opportunities.”

And, the article suggests, “It may also require more people finding themselves thrust into becoming family caregivers or needing to coordinate care.”

Said Tumlinson: “You have to go through it and then be stunned. Then you say, ‘Why is this not being fixed? How is this possible?'”

Read the article at Next Avenue.

Read the Nexus Report
Read the Nexus Survey

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NORC Study Shows Most Older Adults Experience Anxiety and Frustration While Selecting Long-Term Care

December 20, 2022

Twenty-four percent of U.S. adults ages 50 and older say they, or a loved one needed long-term care in the past year, according to a new, national survey commissioned by Nexus Insights, a think tank focused on older adults. The research was conducted by the well-respected NORC at the University of Chicago. The findings illustrate the widespread need for information and guidance about long-term care services among an aging population and their caregivers, a need that experts say will grow exponentially in the future.

Middle-Income Seniors – The Forgotten Middle

April 26, 2022

When it comes to senior housing, wealthy seniors can pay their own way and low-income seniors often qualify for Medicaid. The real problem is for those in the middle. They aren’t wealthy enough for private pay, yet they are too well-off for Medicaid. To make matters worse, the number of people stuck in the middle will nearly double over the next decade. Senior housing operators and policymakers have the opportunity to serve this new market, but how and to what extent?

Nexus founder and Fellow Bob Kramer discusses “The Forgotten Middle” with Nexus Fellow Caroline Pearson, senior vice president health care strategy, NORC at the University of Chicago in an episode of Foresight TV hosted by Steve Moran of Senior Living Foresight.

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Foresight TV with Bob Kramer and Caroline Pearson

March 11, 2022

Nexus founder and Fellow Bob Kramer sits down with Caroline Pearson, senior vice president at NORC at the University of Chicago, March 11. Follow Senior Living Foresight on LinkedIn and YouTube to watch live.

Data gaps could amplify difficulties for health plans

November 11, 2021

In an interview with Health Payer Intelligence, Caroline Pearson, Nexus Fellow and Senior VP of Health Care Strategy at NORC at the University of Chicago, emphasized that the industry’s understanding of effective payment models and strategies for social determinants of health management is “riddled with unknowns.” Her remarks appear in an article: The State of Payer, CBO Social Determinants of Health Contracting.

It is natural, for example, for organizations like large healthcare providers and payers to turn to smaller community-based partners for on-the-ground insight and service delivery. However, according to Pearson, it can be problematic with smaller partners who lack the infrastructure to cover a large population, or are unable to provide the kind of data needed for decision-making.

How can you know if a community-based organization is going to be a good partner for you? Pearson says one key indicator may be their ability to gather and exchange this data.

“The data requirements to deliver supplemental benefits to a health plan population are pretty high: you need some way to identify those members, you need to be able to receive the referrals from the health plan, and then, increasingly, those health plans really want a feedback loop where you can give them information about the result,” Pearson said.

But Pearson explains that even if an organization lacks this ability it’s still possible to work with them –if you can involve a vendor who provides a platform to bridge the gap.

The Forgotten Middle: Improving the Availability of Long-Term Care

November 4, 2021

Don’t overlook the “forgotten middle” when creating policy, said Nexus Fellow Caroline Pearson, Senior Vice President at NORC at the University of Chicago. Pearson recently took part in an interesting and in-depth panel discussion on a report from the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) that provides policy recommendations for increasing access to long-term services and supports (LTSS).

The forgotten middle are those seniors who are “unlikely to qualify for Medicaid, and unlikely to be able to afford many of the private seniors housing options they may need as their health, mobility and cognitive status decline,” Pearson explained.

She cautioned that while “we have tried before and failed to do major, audacious, long-term care reforms” there is reason to hope for something more significant now. “The magnitude of the problem before us has paralyzed us for a long time. But it doesn’t have to be a purely public sector solution,” she said. “There are private resources available, if we were more creative and organized about how we helped people find those and how we delivered them to people.” She cautioned that reform may turn out to be an incremental process.

Pearson addressed the issue of helping people remain in their homes longer, which many seniors prefer. “When you look at the cost of care as people age, housing is a huge component. If we can safely and effectively keep people in their homes, that really lowers the annual cost of care.” In fact, now is a good time for advances in this area. As she pointed out, “In a year in which I’ve had basically everything delivered to my house, and all services come to me, it’s a good time for this sort of innovation.”

When asked which policy for expanding or improving long-term care would top her priority list, Pearson gave a nod to an idea raised by her fellow Nexus Fellows, Anne Tumlinson and David Grabowski. “Funding and program coverage is important, but the landscape is confusing. For people trying to help themselves or their loved ones, it’s difficult to know where to begin,” Pearson said. “Funding a navigation service, a place to begin, to connect you to the private and public resources available to you, would be a huge step in the right direction.”

Pearson was joined on the panel by Leena Sharma, Project Manager and Senior Policy Analyst at Community Catalyst, Henry Claypool, Policy Director of the Community Living Policy Center at UCSF, and Hemi Tewarson, Executive Director of The National Academy for State Health Policy. The panel was hosted by Marilyn Serafani, Director of the Health Project at BPC.

Listen to the full discussion.

Read the BPC Report.

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Tag Archive for: Caroline Pearson

Squeezed: Majority of Aging Adults Are Facing a Crisis Virtual Briefing

If You Hated 2020, You’re Going to Despise Old Age: A Nexus Op-Ed

Sticker Shock: Running Up that Hospital Bill – Caroline Pearson at ViVE 2023

Caroline Pearson Named as Executive Director for Peterson Center on Healthcare

Caregiving Navigation Hubs: A Critical Resource for Older Adults and their Families

NORC Study Shows Most Older Adults Experience Anxiety and Frustration While Selecting Long-Term Care

Middle-Income Seniors – The Forgotten Middle

Foresight TV with Bob Kramer and Caroline Pearson

Data gaps could amplify difficulties for health plans

The Forgotten Middle: Improving the Availability of Long-Term Care

Tag Archive for: Caroline Pearson

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