Description: The Minnesota Cognitive Acuity Screen MCAS is a brief cognitive screen that has been validated to correctly identify mild to moderate cognitive impairment in 98.1 percent of all cases. The MCAS has been in use in the LTCI industry for more than five years, and has shown excellent results in reducing early cognitive claims.

Description: Discussion of the implications of the newly unveiled health care reform proposal by Senator Baucus. Key issues include abandonment of the CLASS Act, inclusion of LTC in cafeteria plans, funding and tax concerns, individual mandate, privacy concerns, play-or-pay employer mandate, impact on Medicare and Medicaid, and gridlock in the legislative finalization process.

Description: A model for an effective, cost efficient national public LTC/LTCI education program that will increase LTCI sales nationwide.

Description: A discussion of the efforts to implement straight through processing and standardization of the HIPAA form for long term care claims data.

Description: An introduction to other articles in this issue about Medicaid abuse and genetic testing.

Description: Article analyzes the reinstatement regulations of long-term care policies.

Description: Description of French long term care claim evaluation system

Description: A discussion about change. Change is constant and will continue—some of it predictable; some of it not. Knowledge is the best tool for understanding change, and this publication is a great forum for allowing the best and brightest to share.

Description: For a long time the primary focus of private LTC insurance companies has been to educate the public about the need for private LTC insurance and to make the product more acceptable to a wider population. To this end there have been numerous changes to the product design to make this product more acceptable to general population. However, one of the things that may have been overlooked in those product design changes is the need for alignment of policyholder and insurance company’s interests, which is to make coverage more affordable and to reduce adverse selection. Incentivizing good behavior from policyholders can not only make LTC insurance policies less expensive but also help policyholders make better health choices, which can help them stay healthy for a longer time. These incentives may also reduce some of the inherent risks in a long term care policy and may help in increasing the sales of private LTC insurance.

Description: New for 2017, we are introducing a series of articles by experienced industry professionals who are relatively new to long-term care (LTC).