Long Term Care Research Paper
The Health Care delivery services for Long-Term Care
Vida R. Mobley
HCS 310/Health Care Delivery in the U.S.
01-31-2011
Martha Plant
“Everyone wants to get older, but no one wants to be old” so the saying goes. Many people approaching retirement age look forward to having more time and fewer responsibilities. Yet, they are afraid of becoming aimless and useless. They also fear isolation, unhappiness and diminishing health. What then, is the secret of a happy life? Good friends and a loving family help to bring happiness to young and old alike. However, what others contribute to an elderly person’s life is not all that counts. A long-term study of 423 elderly couples indicated, “making a contribution to the lives of other people …show more content…
may help to extend our own lives.” This study explains, “these findings suggest that it isn’t what we get from relationships that make contact with others so beneficial,” it is what we give. Such giving may include helping others with housework, running errands, providing transportation, or listening to someone who needs to talk. The recipe for a long and happy life does not consist of a big bank account or anti-aging therapies, and diets, rather, it consists of staying active and giving of one’s time, energy and strength to enrich the lives of others.
It is inevitable that many of us will need some type of long-term care at some time in our life. This care may range from a service as simple as sharing meals with others at a senior center to an expensive service such as a lengthy stay at a nursing home. Long-term care refers to the physical, medical, social and financial support often needed later in life. The prospect of long-term care can be frightening because of the dramatic changes that can occur when a person faces an illness and advanced age: financial loss and dependence on others to take care of our basic needs. Problems arise when we find ourselves in need of this assistance and are unprepared and uninformed about our options.
Long-term care refers to all the services of available that make it possible for you to function as effectively as possible. We often think of long-term care as meeting only our medical needs. In fact, the kind of long-term care that we seek should meet our social, financial and housing needs as well. Long-term care is often incorrectly associated with the care of a person who is not expected to recover from an illness. Many people automatically assume that long-term care means “nursing home” care. Although long-term care includes nursing home care, it more commonly involves many other services. A number of these services are provided by friends and family members or are delivered to your home through community resources. Long-term care encompasses many services at various levels that can be matched to meet the unique needs of each person. For example, some people can cook their own food but need assistance in shopping. Others may need help with the cooking, and still others may need to be fed. A variety of organizations and individuals provide long-term care. Providers include friends and family members, community volunteers and professionals. Professional providers of long-term care vary greatly in both their setting and service. Often, several long-term care professionals, which may include an elder-law attorney and a geriatric care manager work together as a team. Services may be provided in a hospital, a residential institution, your home or a facility within your community. Level of care may range from a homemaker for personal assistance or custodial care to a registered nurse or therapist for skilled care. The cost of these levels of care are considerably different and may not be covered by Medicare or insurance.
The demand for long-term care is increasing steadily. Almost every adult in this country will either enter a nursing home or have to deal with a parent or other relative who does. Few people however are aware of this growing demand and few are prepared to deal with a system that is seriously flawed. Some people believe that the key to dealing with long-term care is adequate preparation. Buying insurance and considering options for care should be enough. These steps are not sufficient. The trails that long-term cares subject you to cannot be planned; this is why the system has to change. Family members can and should do some things to protect their loved ones who are served by this imperfect system. A large revolution is needed, one that can be supported by all people. Few are happy with what today’s long-term care system has become. Many fear changes because it may bring even worse conditions. We need to take a giant step back and recall what we are trying to accomplish. Society has shown no interest in making anywhere near the investment in long-term care that we have made in acute care. We will not provide the technical nor the economic support that we offer in other areas. Part of the problem may be a basic sense of the facility of such care. Good care can make all the difference in the lives of these older citizens and other families. Older persons present challenges to the health care system. Because aging is associated with decreased bodily response to many stresses, in older people, the usual signs and symptoms of disease are often difficult to detect exactly what is going on. The symptoms they do have may be vague, such as being agitated or confused. Older people can become quickly dehydrated and develop confusion as a result. Many doctors or service providers are not familiar with the unusual ways disease can present in older patients. Older people are hard to treat because of communication problems. They may be hard of hearing or get confused and not be able to give a clear history. As the pressure to provide care in shorter periods of time conflict with the difficulties of obtaining a straightforward answer, along with the complicated of diagnosing diseases in the older patient, many doctors become frustrated. Few service providers seem to want to invest the time to obtain a complete assessment, and to communicate with the person in a manner that the patient can understand. Emergency room physicians do not have the time or temperament to work with an older person, especially if they are confused. They are generally, left alone on a gurney frightened for long periods of time while other cases are being treated. These older people are very dependent on the medical care system but often find the system unresponsive and the personnel impatient.
To major concerns have been diverted towards the long-term care system in the United States.
The cost of providing long-term care, particularly institutional care, has increased dramatically. In the nation, long-term care has become a major component of the budget, with national public expenditures totaling $58 billion in 1996 (Burwell, 1996). About $2billion of the U.S.’s budget is allocated to long-term care. Combined with high costs is a criticism that the system of long-term care is biased towards delivering care in the Nursing home setting, despite older people’s documented preferences for in-home care. Keeping a family member at home who is in need of care raises a variety of concerns in addition to the basic logistics. It means trusting a stranger to have total and virtually unsupervised control over your family member. In an assisted-living facility, even if supervision is lax, there is some sense of accountability and oversight that is absent in a home care arrangement. Contacting with an agency might offer some of this oversight, but it would make the proposition very expensive, and even then, the supervision would be cursory at best, although the agency would provide some reassurance of backup services and prior screening. In addition to safety and freedom from abuse, there are also fears about …show more content…
theft.
Good long-term care will cost money. Since it involves hands-on care, it will require more and better trained hands. A recent federal study suggests that more staff is needed in nursing homes to make them even potentially able to improve care. But this additional staff carries a price tag that the federal government is not willing to bear, and the recommendation comes to a halt. Long-term care is hard work. It is physically and emotionally exhausting. It will probably never be possible to raise wages and benefits to a level that would attract people into this field, but at least we should be sure thay people who do enter this field do not leave because they can make more money at fast food restaurants. Making long-term care a more satisfying career for the caregivers will require more than money to provide better pay. If long-term care is ever to achieve the goals we seek, all, including these who work in it, as a noble calling, must first see it. It cannot be viewed as being staffed by reject of other jobs.
In conclusion, getting a better long-term care system means becoming better individual customers and developing a stronger collective consumer presence overall.
Too many forces shape the current system to allow it to adapt, as it should. Unfortunately, long-term care is at a point where most people have little practice or experience. The problems will not get easier until the care gets better.
REFERENCES
McGraw-Hill. (2002). Planning For Long-Term Care. Washington,DC: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company.
Robert Applebaum, P. J. (1997, unknown unknown). Long Term Care Resources Program. Retrieved January 31, 2011, from Duke University: http://ltc.duke.edu/occasional_7.htm
Robert L. Kane, M. &. (2005). It Shouldn't Be This Way The Failure of Long-Term Care. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Society, T. W. (2004). Recipe for a long and happy life. The Watchtower ,
3.
Vida R. Mobley
HCS 310/Health Care Delivery in the U.S.
01-31-2011
Martha Plant
“Everyone wants to get older, but no one wants to be old” so the saying goes. Many people approaching retirement age look forward to having more time and fewer responsibilities. Yet, they are afraid of becoming aimless and useless. They also fear isolation, unhappiness and diminishing health. What then, is the secret of a happy life? Good friends and a loving family help to bring happiness to young and old alike. However, what others contribute to an elderly person’s life is not all that counts. A long-term study of 423 elderly couples indicated, “making a contribution to the lives of other people …show more content…
may help to extend our own lives.” This study explains, “these findings suggest that it isn’t what we get from relationships that make contact with others so beneficial,” it is what we give. Such giving may include helping others with housework, running errands, providing transportation, or listening to someone who needs to talk. The recipe for a long and happy life does not consist of a big bank account or anti-aging therapies, and diets, rather, it consists of staying active and giving of one’s time, energy and strength to enrich the lives of others.
It is inevitable that many of us will need some type of long-term care at some time in our life. This care may range from a service as simple as sharing meals with others at a senior center to an expensive service such as a lengthy stay at a nursing home. Long-term care refers to the physical, medical, social and financial support often needed later in life. The prospect of long-term care can be frightening because of the dramatic changes that can occur when a person faces an illness and advanced age: financial loss and dependence on others to take care of our basic needs. Problems arise when we find ourselves in need of this assistance and are unprepared and uninformed about our options.
Long-term care refers to all the services of available that make it possible for you to function as effectively as possible. We often think of long-term care as meeting only our medical needs. In fact, the kind of long-term care that we seek should meet our social, financial and housing needs as well. Long-term care is often incorrectly associated with the care of a person who is not expected to recover from an illness. Many people automatically assume that long-term care means “nursing home” care. Although long-term care includes nursing home care, it more commonly involves many other services. A number of these services are provided by friends and family members or are delivered to your home through community resources. Long-term care encompasses many services at various levels that can be matched to meet the unique needs of each person. For example, some people can cook their own food but need assistance in shopping. Others may need help with the cooking, and still others may need to be fed. A variety of organizations and individuals provide long-term care. Providers include friends and family members, community volunteers and professionals. Professional providers of long-term care vary greatly in both their setting and service. Often, several long-term care professionals, which may include an elder-law attorney and a geriatric care manager work together as a team. Services may be provided in a hospital, a residential institution, your home or a facility within your community. Level of care may range from a homemaker for personal assistance or custodial care to a registered nurse or therapist for skilled care. The cost of these levels of care are considerably different and may not be covered by Medicare or insurance.
The demand for long-term care is increasing steadily. Almost every adult in this country will either enter a nursing home or have to deal with a parent or other relative who does. Few people however are aware of this growing demand and few are prepared to deal with a system that is seriously flawed. Some people believe that the key to dealing with long-term care is adequate preparation. Buying insurance and considering options for care should be enough. These steps are not sufficient. The trails that long-term cares subject you to cannot be planned; this is why the system has to change. Family members can and should do some things to protect their loved ones who are served by this imperfect system. A large revolution is needed, one that can be supported by all people. Few are happy with what today’s long-term care system has become. Many fear changes because it may bring even worse conditions. We need to take a giant step back and recall what we are trying to accomplish. Society has shown no interest in making anywhere near the investment in long-term care that we have made in acute care. We will not provide the technical nor the economic support that we offer in other areas. Part of the problem may be a basic sense of the facility of such care. Good care can make all the difference in the lives of these older citizens and other families. Older persons present challenges to the health care system. Because aging is associated with decreased bodily response to many stresses, in older people, the usual signs and symptoms of disease are often difficult to detect exactly what is going on. The symptoms they do have may be vague, such as being agitated or confused. Older people can become quickly dehydrated and develop confusion as a result. Many doctors or service providers are not familiar with the unusual ways disease can present in older patients. Older people are hard to treat because of communication problems. They may be hard of hearing or get confused and not be able to give a clear history. As the pressure to provide care in shorter periods of time conflict with the difficulties of obtaining a straightforward answer, along with the complicated of diagnosing diseases in the older patient, many doctors become frustrated. Few service providers seem to want to invest the time to obtain a complete assessment, and to communicate with the person in a manner that the patient can understand. Emergency room physicians do not have the time or temperament to work with an older person, especially if they are confused. They are generally, left alone on a gurney frightened for long periods of time while other cases are being treated. These older people are very dependent on the medical care system but often find the system unresponsive and the personnel impatient.
To major concerns have been diverted towards the long-term care system in the United States.
The cost of providing long-term care, particularly institutional care, has increased dramatically. In the nation, long-term care has become a major component of the budget, with national public expenditures totaling $58 billion in 1996 (Burwell, 1996). About $2billion of the U.S.’s budget is allocated to long-term care. Combined with high costs is a criticism that the system of long-term care is biased towards delivering care in the Nursing home setting, despite older people’s documented preferences for in-home care. Keeping a family member at home who is in need of care raises a variety of concerns in addition to the basic logistics. It means trusting a stranger to have total and virtually unsupervised control over your family member. In an assisted-living facility, even if supervision is lax, there is some sense of accountability and oversight that is absent in a home care arrangement. Contacting with an agency might offer some of this oversight, but it would make the proposition very expensive, and even then, the supervision would be cursory at best, although the agency would provide some reassurance of backup services and prior screening. In addition to safety and freedom from abuse, there are also fears about …show more content…
theft.
Good long-term care will cost money. Since it involves hands-on care, it will require more and better trained hands. A recent federal study suggests that more staff is needed in nursing homes to make them even potentially able to improve care. But this additional staff carries a price tag that the federal government is not willing to bear, and the recommendation comes to a halt. Long-term care is hard work. It is physically and emotionally exhausting. It will probably never be possible to raise wages and benefits to a level that would attract people into this field, but at least we should be sure thay people who do enter this field do not leave because they can make more money at fast food restaurants. Making long-term care a more satisfying career for the caregivers will require more than money to provide better pay. If long-term care is ever to achieve the goals we seek, all, including these who work in it, as a noble calling, must first see it. It cannot be viewed as being staffed by reject of other jobs.
In conclusion, getting a better long-term care system means becoming better individual customers and developing a stronger collective consumer presence overall.
Too many forces shape the current system to allow it to adapt, as it should. Unfortunately, long-term care is at a point where most people have little practice or experience. The problems will not get easier until the care gets better.
REFERENCES
McGraw-Hill. (2002). Planning For Long-Term Care. Washington,DC: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company.
Robert Applebaum, P. J. (1997, unknown unknown). Long Term Care Resources Program. Retrieved January 31, 2011, from Duke University: http://ltc.duke.edu/occasional_7.htm
Robert L. Kane, M. &. (2005). It Shouldn't Be This Way The Failure of Long-Term Care. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Society, T. W. (2004). Recipe for a long and happy life. The Watchtower ,
3.