Planning ahead for Future long term care needs

PLanning Ahead for Future Care needs

 

Very few individuals want to think about their future needs for aging services and long-term care until it becomes a necessity, which can often lead to poor planning.  Planning ahead for unexpected illness, injury, or simply the typical needs of the elderly, can eliminate quick decision making on a wide variety of aging service options.

 

Assisted living facilities, retirement communities and nursing homes frequently have a waiting list for admission. In-home care service providers, such as Comfort Keepers, typically do not have waiting lists and allow for the client to continue living independently in the comfort of their own home.  These services generally include companionship, home cooking, light housekeeping, shopping, transportation, and errands, but may also include personal care services such as bathing, feeding, transferring or incontinence care.

 

The cost of long-term care services is something for which many Americans are not prepared, and costs are expected to continually rise in the future. Today in the United States, 6,000 people turn 65 every day, and one in five Americans will be older than age 65 by the year 2030 (American Association of Retired Persons, 2003). This increase of U.S. seniors translates into more people looking for assistance with daily living activities at a staggering rate.

 

“We have found that many of our clients are not prepared for the monumental decisions surrounding long-term care options,” shared Clark Bongaardt, owner of the Springfield and Wayne, PA, Comfort Keepers. “It is our job to help them through the process, to the best of our abilities ensuring that when the time comes the most appropriate care is delivered.”

 

In the planning stages, it is often beneficial to speak with a professional about how to begin this process. Lawyers, accountants, professional care coordinators or the County Office Service of Aging (COSA) can explain the options and which direction to head.

 

The following is a brief overview of some of the different payment options available for long-term care:

 

·        Long-term care insurance will provide for the assistance needed for an extended period if you cannot perform the activities of daily living.

·        Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) is an option that falls under Medicare as well as Medicaid and offers medical and socials services to elderly individuals allowing them to continue living at home (may not be available in all states).

·        Medicaid will pay for the majority of nursing home costs which covers nearly 65 percent of all residents. It is a joint state-federal program that aids individuals who fall under a certain poverty level determined by the state.

·        Medicare is health insurance for people over the age of 65 as well as certain individuals who are disabled. It is an insurance program that is intended to cover the various services that focus on recovery of a medical problem.

·        States may offer a variety of services to consumers under a Home and Community Based Services waiver program and the number of services that can be provided is not limited.  These programs may provide a combination of both traditional medical services (i.e. dental services, skilled nursing services) as well as non-medical services (i.e. respite, homemaking, and personal care).

 

People often assume health insurance will cover long-term care and, unfortunately, that is often untrue. Understanding these programs will help to remove the financial burden upon you and your family.

 

It is easy to get confused when making a decision about home care, especially if it feels like a very distant issue. When you plan ahead for long term care, you are making decisions about your own life by choice, instead of other people making decisions for you in crisis. For many Comfort Keepers in-home care services are a care option that may be the long term solution for an individual’s care needs.  However, in the event an individual’s needs go beyond what can be safely provided in the home, Comfort Keepers can be a resource and can offer research and information to help you in this process.

 

About Comfort Keepers

Founded in 1998 by a registered home health care nurse and her husband, the Comfort Keepers franchise system has grown to over 500 locations in 44 states, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland. Comfort Keepers has ranked as one of the top three franchises in senior care Entrepreneur magazine’s Franchise 500 for the past four years. For more information about Comfort Keepers, visit www.comfortkeepers.com.  Each office is independently owned and operated.

 

 

Have a loved one who falls, lives alone – try personal monitoring systems alarm to call for help

We all know the famous commercial where the lady is laying on the ground yelling, “Help me I fallen and can’t get up!” The commercial is for the life line or life alert machine that calls for help for her. Interestingly enough the commercials have now evolved to a daughter and a mother who are sitting and the daughter explains to all of us how the machine kept her mother out of the facility.

The marketing strategy is to try and convince a senior that having that machine is the answer to being placed in a facility. Well, I have news for that poor senior…the machine is not the answer. The answer to staying out of a facility is safety not a machine that calls for help if you push it.

And that is the key, remembering to push it. Any person who is well of mind and able to push the button will probably not end up in a long term care facility. Most people who have a well brain and their memory are intact can manage with physical impairments with some help in the house. Once in a while there is an exception and a person does require so much assistance that long term care is recommended but for the most part a person who can push the button can call for help.

If the person has memory impairment, the machine is of no use. The person forgets they are wearing the pendant and forgets how the machine works and will often take off the pendant and leave it on the counter.

Now there are other mechanisms that the senior does not have to push or to operate to get it to call for help. There are things like fall detectors that client can wear – about the size of a cell phone that will go off automatically if the client falls. It registers the jarring of the body against something and it goes off on its own and calls for help. A good example of this is when you sit in a recliner chair and you hit the button and the chair throws you back into a reclining position. If you were wearing the detector it would probably go off. It thinks you fell from the quick jerk of your body.

Other mechanisms such as wall mounted video cameras and motion detectors are fairly sophisticated and can do things like keep track via the internet whether your senior has risen and moved around in the home. The mechanism works much like a motion detector but only opposite. The motion detector say on a building has a light go off if someone walks by it alerting that someone is there. The motion detectors for seniors are opposite. If the senior does not go by one of them for a period of time say a half hour -  you program in the time you want, the detector goes off and sends an alert via the e-mail system, phone, fax however you set it up that your loved one is not moving around.

There is so much technology out there to help keep your senior safe and at home. Again the most important thing is their safety. You can have all the gadgets in the world but if they don’t work when you need them to or do the job of keeping your senior safe, they are worthless and waste of money. For more information on technology available go to our website: wwww.comfortkeepers.com