Senate Report: Overhaul California's Long-Term Care System

California uses 112 programs spread across 20 state departments and agencies to provide long-term care for its nearly five million elderly residents. A new state Senate report says that
patchwork system needs an overhaul.

Democratic Senator Carol Liu’s office sorted and color-coded all those different long-term care programs by department. “It looks like a periodic table, doesn’t it?” Liu says. 

It does, in fact. And Liu says it’s long past time to consolidate a system she calls “shattered.”

“See where there’s duplication and maybe shifting of resources into fitting the needs of more people, as opposed to letting some of these programs just exist because they’ve existed for a long period of time,” Liu says. 

The report also calls on the state to improve its workforce development and train more long-term care workers – with California’s elderly population expected to grow by more than 2.5 million over the next 15 years.