| Homepage
Our
Pages on Retirement
Pages
on all Issues Related to Assisted Care, Care Givers,
Selection of Care Homes, Long Term Illness
How
to Advertise for Jobs or for a Job Vacancy
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
copyright
©2010
interpublishgroup
Subscribe
to our FREE Internet Ezine about
Retirement, Home Business
tips, Retirement in Belize, Mexico, Costa Rica and
Europe as well
as Retirement Jobs and
other things of interest. Enter your contact
information below and click: "Subscribe
here".
Your privacy is guaranteed!
See
Privacy Policy
|
|
Caring for
People with Alzheimer’s, Dementia and other long
term Illnesses.
Looking
after the Terminally Ill.
Long-term
care is a national problem. We have an aging
population, with fewer sudden deaths and longer life
expectancy. The need for supportive medical, social and
personal care increases, as people become older. At the
same time, as in most industrialized countries, we have a
decreasing pool of formal and informal caregivers. This
puts a severe strain on the current care system.
Who needs Long-Term Care?
Long-term care refers to a wide range of services needed
by people, who are unable to meet their basic living
needs, for an extended period of time. This may be the
result of accidents, illness or frailty, brought about by
old age. The services for long term care, have to cover
an individuals inability to move about, dress, bath, eat,
use a toilet, take the necessary medication and help with
other accidents of incontinence. In addition, care may be
needed to help the disabled, with ordinary household
tasks, such as cleaning, preparing meals, shopping,
paying bills, visiting the doctor or answering the phone.
If you want to solve these problems with an in-home
carer, click here to see what is normally offered and,
how much it would cost.
When long-term care disabilities are
caused by impairments from stroke, depression, dementia,
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc., then the demands on the
caregiver become significantly higher.
Long-term
care requires a healthy person, a relative or
professional caregiver, to provide support for the
disabled person. As an alternative to home care, this
support can be offered in an institution. Generally,
those who are disabled prefer to stay at home. The
deciding factor of where to receive home or institutional
help, centers on the nature of the disability.
|
|
A
relative caring for an overweight patient may be
unable to help him bathe, dress, use the toilet
or even transfer from the bed to a chair. The
caregiver will either have to hire aides to come
to the home or put him in an institution.
Alzheimer's patient may also become unmanageable
and must receive constant supervision. This would
be almost impossible at home and an Alzheimer's
facility may be the only solution. |
There are several ways to go about
providing care for your loved ones, when dealing
with long term care. You may want to consider
nursing homes or assisted living communities.
Both will require substantial funding and some
sort of organizational planning, both in terms of
financial planning and day to day organization. We have a page that helps
you select the right facility.
Remember, not all facilities are the same and
some are outright frightening.
In order to find the community best for your
loved one some local research must be undertaken.
The cost of a nursing home ranges from $36,000 to
$90,000 per year. Home and community care can
range from $12,000 to $50,000 per year. This
may e a considerable strain for many families. Statistics
show that after paying for 1 year of long term
care, 72% of elderly Americans are impoverished.
If there is a healthy spouse in that
unfortunate household, the standard of living is
greatly reduced from the loss of assets.
Should
you buy Long Term care Insurance
One
way of overcoming the financial problem is
getting long term care insurance. Though you
cannot wait to get that until you need long term
care. It has to be arranged a long time before
you actually call upon to help you cover your
expenses There are many long term care insurance
plans available in the marketplace. Each offers a
unique combination of benefits and pricing
structure, making side-by-side comparisons
difficult. The Federal Government
has a Long term care Insurance and provides you
with a means of comparing Long term Care
Insurance's offered to the public. It is
not easy to follow, but
click here to start getting the tools to compare.
Getting
long term care insurance is a rather risky
business. Having to sue the company that should
provide the benefits is not uncommon. The Consumer
Law Pages have
some good advice on that. Buying a policy is a
function of your age, health status, overall
retirement objectives, income and wealth. If
the only source of income is a minimum Social
Security benefit or Supplemental Security Income
(SSI), do not purchase a policy. If
paying utilities, food or medicine stretches a
budget; this person should not purchase a policy.
Long-term
care policies are only for people with
significant assets they want to preserve
for family members, to assure independence and
not burden family members with nursing home
bills. Never buy a policy if paying the
premiums will be a problem. If you have
existing health problems that will result in the
need for long-term care, such as Alzheimer's or
Parkinson's disease, no company will sell you a
policy because the probability of losses exceeds
the probability the carrier will earn a profit on
its contract with you.
When
Home Care is the only Alternative
Often,
the only option when caring for an elderly family
member with a long term illness such as
Alzheimer’s or dementia is "at home
care". This could be done alone by family
members or with the assistance of a part-time/full-time care
giver or visiting care givers. If you
click on that page, you will find some
definitions of what kind of care you can get,
what they do and how much it costs.
If you are considering caring for an elderly
person at home you might want to familiarize
yourself with the problems and difficulties
involved in home care.
Www.aahomecare.org has a selection of videos and
material available to help with the care of
Alzheimer’s patients and the long term caret
they require.
At home care care will require products and
supplies such as beds, clothing and safety and
security to provide the best possible environment
for patient and caregiver alike. Good places to
start looking for the products you may need, are The Wright Stuff Home Healthcare Products - CLICK HERE
 , www.alzstore.com or www.agelessdesign.com. They
provide products that make living with
Alzheimer’s disease as easy as possible. www.elderdepot.com, www.caregiverproducts.com and www.buckandbuck.com also
provide products that cater to the elderly.
As
a care giver you need to stay abreast of
information and issues regarding Alzheimer’s
disease, dementia and other medical conditions.
You will want and need to be an active
participant in your loved one’s medical
care. For this you need to be able to
communicate easily and effectively with
numerous members of the medical field. This may
include other caregivers, nurses, doctors and
nutritionists. A good starting point for
making you comfortable with the way doctors and
other medical personnel see the patient and his
health problems are the books below.
| Some
Books on the Topic from amazon.com |
They are all available from amazon
and you can buy most books second hand (used).
Just click on the links.
The
important aspect to be aware of is that you are
not alone when dealing with an long term care
patient. Though it often seems like that. While
we do not want to bore you with statistics, it
might help you understand the problem better and
you might even become politically active on
behalf of long term care patients and their home
based care givers.
A
few Facts About Long-Term Care
More
long-term care is received at home and in
community facilities than is received in nursing
homes. Of total care provided, 78% is home or
community based. One quarter of American
households are directly or indirectly involved in
a care giving environment. This represents 25
million families, 70 % of them trying to manage
the demands of a full-time jobs with the demands
of care giving. Long-term care is not restricted
to the old. Out of the total population receiving
long-term care, 45% are under the age of 65. Out
of 15 million Americans receiving care more than
7 million are of working age For those over 65
there is a 41% chance they will spend an average
of 2.5 years in a nursing home. The combined
lifetime risk of needing home and community care
as well as nursing home care is about 6 out of
10.
|
|
Care provided by
government agencies is diminishing.
Medicare spending on home care dropped
from $17.5 billion in 1997 to $14.9
billion in 1998 and to $9.7 billion in
1999 and has further dropped since then.
It's predicted that an aging population
over the next 20 years will cause a huge
drain on state Medicaid programs, which
are still the primary source of funding
for nursing homes. Congress has
sent a clear message it has no intent to
create a new government-sponsored,
long-term care entitlement program. |
Despite increasing pressure from
the AARP and the demands of a voting public that
is increasingly growing older, the government's
attitude has not changed. At the moment (2010) ,
it looks as if the government, and especially
Congress, has little intention to intervene in
solving a pending long-term care crisis.
|
|
