High turnover, worker shortages, low wages, unstable funding and hard, physical work are key issues plaguing employees at long-term care facilities in Maine.

And this is just three years before the initial wave of baby boomers reaches full retirement age.

“It is a big issue,” Elise Scala of the Institute for Health Policy at University of Southern Maine said of the challenges facing the long-term care industry. “We discovered that workers would like higher wages, but employers have a gap in what they can offer because their reimbursement is very limited.”

A primary reason for the wage gap is a lack of stable, sufficient funding from MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program, Nadine L. Grosso of the Maine Health Care Association said.

The industry, she said, is well aware that retired baby boomers will magnify the current challenges.

“We think there is going to be a huge demand placed on all settings (of long-term care),” she said.

Scala, who is employed by USM’s Muskie School of Public Policy, is among the people working on the issue. She is encouraged by efforts made to define problems and devise solutions.

But she knows the industry relies heavily on women between the ages of 24 and 54. That population block, she said, is projected to decrease. At the same time, the competition to recruit such workers is becoming more fierce, primarily from retail and service-industry employers — call centers among the most prominent.

“I think there are some good people working on (the challenges facing long-term care),” Scala said, “but there is so much competition. I have been discouraged by the limited resources and attention given the issue.”

The industry has tried to improve wages in part by creating more categories of workers and providing better compensation for more skilled or educated employees.

A certified medication technician, essentially a certified nursing assistant with a higher level of training, earns on average $11.61 per hour, according to the Maine Health Care Association.

This is more than a $1 an hour better than CNAs ($10.36) and $1.65 or more greater than the average wage earned by certified residential medication aides ($9.96) and personal support specialists ($9.01).

Maine’s long-term care industry is not without its strengths, especially when compared to other states. The Maine Health Care Association, for example, notes that the annual turnover rate (the latest figures are from 2002) of 51 percent is 20 percent below the national average.

Customer satisfaction with the industry, meanwhile, is high. A survey commissioned by the Maine Health Care Association found that 91 percent of respondents (650 people) — all of them family members of long-term care residents — rated the overall care their loved one received as good or excellent. Colin Hickey — 861-9205 chickey@centralmaine.com