Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Terry Coplin For The Register-Guard

At age 58, I've got all the things a successful baby boomer would want: grown kids, a complete Rolling Stones compact disc collection and an adrenaline-fueled performance motorcycle with chrome in just the right places.

The Oregon Health Fund Board is grappling with creating a system that provides health care to everyone. Yet even in that admirable effort, there is little mention of how to care for seniors in long-term care facilities.

To begin with, there are simply not enough doctors. The business world refers to this as a capacity problem for the delivery system - a work force issue. But the reality is that there's a physician shortage today to care for elderly patients, and that's even before new patients are added to the system.

When new "insured" patients are added in, even more provider resources will be consumed, especially primary care physicians. Access to health insurance is not the same as access to care.

Long-term care is essentially a range of services that includes medical and nonmedical care for people who have a chronic condition or disability. It can be provided in the home, in assisted living facilities or in nursing homes.

This level of care is important to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and to the 9 million U.S. citizens who turn 65 this year. By 2012, the number of Americans who need long-term care will jump to 12 million.

And the number of aging boomers will keep increasing every year for the next 15, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Our company, Trillium Community Health Plan, is partnering with Pinnacle Healthcare facilities to try to ease this problem by using a bit of common sense and Oregon's talented pool of nurse practitioners.

After studying this issue, an obvious solution appeared: Why not just move nurse practitioners to long-term care facilities and keep them on site? Patients will have more immediate access to care. It is actually cheaper, and it results in improved quality of care.

So that's what we did. We've recently decided to make this practice permanent, after a pilot program that began in January. By next month, our nurse practitioners will be on site at three facilities in Lane County. Our hope is this idea will catch on with other communities interested in addressing the immense challenges facing the long-term care of aging boomers.

So as the Legislature considers the proposals in the Health Fund Board recommendations, I hope lawmakers don't forget about seniors today and the boomers who will be seniors tomorrow.

As the song goes, "You can't always get what you want - and if you try sometime, you find you get what you need."

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Terry Coplin is chief executive officer of the Trillium Community Health Plan of Eugene.