Shortly before leaving town for its August recess, Congress released a report showing a steady increase in the incidences of abuse in our nation's nursing homes since 1996.

Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, immediately called for giving more funding to our nation's nursing homes, strengthening enforcement and increasing regulations. While Waxman's goal of improving the quality of life for our nation's nursing home residents is laudable, his aim is misguided.

According to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Aging, Medicare funding for nursing homes increased 30 percent per year during the 1990s. Again, just last year Congress appropriated an additional $31 billion while calling for more regulations and better staffing.

Many states have also increased funding while attempting to strengthen regulations and demand more and better staffing. Waxman's report, along with several others during the last several years, all show these attempts to ``fix'' nursing homes simply are not working.

This country has come to rely upon a failed system of warehousing the elderly as the primary - and for many families, the only - long-term care option. While spending for care in large homes has continued to climb, the funding for noninstitutional care either has remained flat or, in some instances, has declined. As federal policy leaders consider the ramifications of this report, they must begin to consider the notion of changing the entire long-term care delivery system in this country.

Consider this: A family struggles with an ailing grandmother. She is relatively healthy but because of mental deterioration is a danger to herself if left alone during the day. Under the current system, the only reimbursable option Medicare will pay for, almost without exception, is a nursing home. The law encourages the family to have a loved one become impoverished - thus making her eligible for Medicaid - while discouraging alternatives.

What if this family had real choices? What if the family could choose an adult day-care program where the grandmother could be attended to during the day and returned home at night? Combine this with either a respite program (to give the family intermittent short-term breaks) or in-home assistance, and many families would be able to choose a program that better suits their particular needs.

Avoiding a nursing home would solve several problems at the same time. Families would be able to provide care in a loving home environment, while nursing home occupancy and related costs would decline. Taxpayers would be at least somewhat relieved of the burden of higher cost care, while families would be given the freedom to choose alternatives that best suit their needs.

Proponents of this type of program envision a voucher of sorts for families that might otherwise qualify for a nursing home. Families would be allowed to choose from a host of options known as home and community-based care programs, as well as nursing homes. These options might include in-home assistance, adult day care, respite care, foster care and small group homes, as well as a variety of informal care programs that each cost significantly less than institutional care. Under this model, competition would be fierce among providers because families would be able to select among a host of options.

According to a review of relevant studies by the Florida Policy Exchange Center on Aging (www.fpeca.usf.edu/ ), states that have implemented these types of programs beyond the ``pilot project'' phase have dramatically decreased costs while improving elder care for tens of thousands of families. In fact, according to a 1994 Government Accounting Office report, the most notable problem with these systems is that the demand for alternatives to nursing homes often exceeds the ability of the market to provide them. Additionally, one study from a 1995 issue of the Journal of Gerontology found that if this model were put to its best use, nursing home occupancy could be cut in half.

While important to understanding the issue, these studies cannot measure the noneconomic benefits to families who are better able to remain together, nor can they measure the ``value'' of allowing someone to age with dignity. No economic model can place a price tag on teaching children the virtue of caring for an aging loved one. Nor can the full social impact be measured of treating the elderly and disabled as if they belonged in our homes and not discarding them the moment their care becomes a burden.

The newly released congressional report ought to be viewed not as another excuse to throw more money at a failed system, but as a window of opportunity to encourage a shift away from our primary dependence on skilled nursing facilities and toward proven family-centered concepts. This will not only empower families and save taxpayers money, but also allow seniors to age with dignity.

Kenneth L. Connor is president of the Family Research Council and a Florida trial lawyer who has specialized in litigation against nursing homes for abuse and neglect of the elderly.

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