Memorial Day greetings to you. Today is the day we remember the men and women who gave their lives while serving this country. So it seems appropriate to highlight an article from the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, GA, profiling an organization that honors veterans before they die—veterans in hospice care.
The national program, We Honor Veterans, partners with hospices and sends volunteers to thank ailing veterans. The article follows one volunteer, Sam Nelson, on a visit in which he presents the veteran, retired Chief Warrant Officer 3 Troy “Pop” Wakefield, with a framed certificate of service and a lap blanket.
“They are never the same,” said [Sam] Nelson, chairman of the Chattahoochee Valley Veterans Council, of his private ceremonies with veterans. “I have walked in right after the guy went unconscious, I have been there when they looked healthy or when they were just hanging on. I have done them in wheelchairs; I have done them standing up and in bed. It’s never the same, but they all are meaningful.”
“It was wonderful. It was really great,” another veteran, retired Sgt. 1st Class James Billingsley, said of his visit from Nelson. “I thought they forgot me.”
Thank you to all our members of the military, past and present, and to their families. We remember you today and always.
If you’re helping care for an elderly veteran, please browse through these previous veteran-oriented OurParents posts to find tips that may be helpful.
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
Modern-Day In-Home Care Offers More Services, Care
We’ve talked a good bit about how nursing-home care has changed since our grandparents’ days. But Bonnie Reppert, owner of a Home Instead franchise serving Las Vegas, points out that in-home care has too.
Reppert opened her franchise’s doors in 1996. Now, less than two decades later, client needs have expanded, and so have her company’s services, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“We do offer more personal-care services than we did in the beginning. In the beginning it was more like housekeeping and transportation, errands, those kinds of services, and … as more and more people are wanting to stay home longer, they have more needs for personal-care services, which would include bathing, grooming, dressing,” Reppert said.
To find out what in-home care agencies in your area offer, click here.
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
If you’re checking out nursing homes for your elderly parent, you may notice some not-elderly faces. Over a quarter of people at nursing homes are under age 65, reports the Reno-Gazette Journal, a Nevada newspaper. Many of them are there for short-term recovery care. Others live there.
Pressure for hospitals to discharge seriously ill and injured patients and medical advancements that save the lives of people who in the past likely would have died are two reasons for the growing trend, according to Charles Perry of the Nevada Health Care Association. …
“People who you might have expected to see in an Intensive Care Unit are now being released and need acute care,” Perry said.
But the article also says the trend “is reversing itself” in some states, in part due to the availability of assisted-living communities.
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
More Hospices Helping Patients Keep Their Pets
If you’re dying, you want your loved ones around you. For many people, that includes pets. Caring for animals can be difficult to impossible when you’re dealing with a terminal illness, so hospices are increasingly taking on pet-care responsibilities, reports the Orlando Sentinel.
“Hospice is supposed to take care of the patient and the family,” said Lisa Gray, volunteer department manager of Cornerstone Hospice and Palliative Care, which serves seven counties including Lake, Orange and Osceola. “For a lot of them, their family is their pet.” …
Throughout the country, hospices are starting to recognize the therapeutic benefits of keeping the animal and owner together until the end, said Delana Taylor McNac, founder and manager of Pet Peace of Mind, a national organization that works with other hospices around the country. Nationwide, 50 hospices offer the program.
“It’s catching on now that hospice is beginning to see a cultural change on the importance of pets,” she said.
Here are a couple of posts about other services hospices are offering that you may want to ask about if you’re evaluating agencies:
- Hospice Services Helping Patients Record Their Life Stories
- Hospices Begin Offering Animal Therapy–and Allowing Personal Pets to Visit
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
In the last few weeks, the use of antipsychotics in nursing homes has been in the news with claims of overuse. But in a letter to The Boston Globe, two geriatric psychiatrists argue for more balance in the reporting.
Drs. David Harnett and James Ellison say that behavioral interventions should be used first, but when they fail, antipsychotics are an important and helpful treatment tool.
These and other medications may be appropriate in some patients with dementia, at the lowest effective doses, for the shortest duration needed, with appropriate informed consent. Their modest benefits and significant side effects must be carefully monitored. No medications have been shown more effective for this purpose, and “off-label” use is a medically accepted treatment approach.
Someday we’ll have better medications to combine with behavioral treatments. Meanwhile, demonization of anti-psychotics may limit treatment options and discourage nursing homes from accepting behaviorally difficult patients.
If you’re looking for a nursing home for someone with dementia, you might also find this post and its links helpful.
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
Professionals not normally associated with senior care are jumping into the game, The Wall Street Journal reports. They’re serving as advisors.
Though the trend is in its early stages … financial planners—especially those who serve a number of elderly clients—are starting to help clients evaluate local retirement-living options and their costs. …
Sometimes planners band together with other professionals who work with the elderly so they can coordinate in-home services to avoid a more expensive move the client may not be ready to make.
Financial planners are also helping people negotiate with continuing-care retirement communities for lower fees or extra amenities, the article reports. And they’re helping evaluate CCRCs’ financial stability. If you’re doing your own financial evaluation, the end of the article also has some recommendations on what to look for.
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
When you see the price tag for assisted living, caring for your elderly parent yourself can start looking more appealing. But that choice may be more expensive than some people think, reports NPR.
While MetLife says assisted living costs an average of $42,000 a year, family caregiving also takes a financial toll—and not just on today’s bills.
The MetLife report said that for the typical woman, the lost wages due to dropping out of the labor force because of adult caregiving responsibilities averages nearly $143,000. That figure reflects the wages lost while not working — typically for about five years — as well as lower wages after returning to the workforce with rusty skills. When foregone pension and Social Security benefits are counted, the out-of-pocket losses roughly double.
“Family caregivers are themselves aging and yet are providing care at a time when they also need to plan and save for their own retirement,” MetLife said. The people who drop out of the workforce “can jeopardize their future financial security,” the study concluded.
In February, we noted that home modifications and in-home care costs (if you hire some help) also add up. Of course, being a family caregiver also has its rewards.
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
You may have heard claims in the news lately about nursing homes overusing antipsychotic medications on people with Alzheimer’s. But what’s the right amount? What’s the magic number that indicates the drugs aren’t being overprescribed?
There’s no hard-and-fast rule, but there are some general guidelines, reports the website of The Boston Globe.
If more than 25 percent of residents are using antipsychotic medications, this may indicate that the Unit relies more on medications rather than behavioral techniques to calm aggressive symptoms, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
[A report from The Globe] winnowed this down further to determine the rate of prescribing antipsychotic drugs to those without psychosis or a related condition — which isn’t recommended by the US Food and Drug Administration for safety reasons. The report found that the national median for using antipsychotics in such patients was 16.7 percent, but you also need to ask about the percentage of residents with behavioral problems in the facility since that can correlate with rates of prescribing these medications. “Some nursing homes may work with those who have higher likelihood of psychiatric problems,” pointed out Rowlett, “while others don’t accept any patients with behavioral challenges.”
The article lists six questions you should ask—plus answers you should listen for—when evaluating a nursing home for someone who has Alzheimer’s. OurParents also offers some general questions for any nursing-home evaluation here.
You may also be interested in these previous OurParents posts about choosing a nursing home for someone who has Alzheimer’s:
- Comfort-Centered Alzheimer’s Care Makes a Difference, Some Experts Say
- New Concepts in Memory Care: Pets, Kids and Clubs
- Choosing a Senior-Care Facility: The Home Design Difference
- Nursing Homes for Alzheimer’s: Be Careful, Not Scared, Expert Says
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
Has your elderly parent been refused Medicare coverage for home health-care? If that was because the condition wasn’t expected to improve, you may have success filing an appeal, suggests The Wall Street Journal.
Medicare will only cover daily nursing care at home if there is “a predictable end to the need,” the Center for Medicare Advocacy told the Journal. However, the Center argues, that doesn’t mean the person must be expected to get better. People with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, for example, should be eligible. The article advises:
If you are unable to secure coverage from a home health agency, you can search for another agency. You also can pay out-of-pocket for services and request in writing that the agency submit the bill to Medicare. If Medicare approves your claim, you’ll get reimbursed.
If not, you can appeal. For instructions, see the “Self Help Packet for Home Health Denials” at medicareadvocacy.org .
There are other requirements for home health care though. The article mentions them too.
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
AARP Asks Texas to Support Homelike Nursing Homes
In April, we discussed why more nursing homes haven’t jumped on the nontraditional bandwagon yet—developing more homelike settings and giving residents more control. A big reason seems to be money.
That’s why AARP Texas is asking their state to change its Medicaid policies. AARP Bulletin reports that one nontraditional nursing home in Texas—called a Green House—costs over $195 a day. Medicaid only reimburses about $106 a day.
AARP Texas is asking state officials to adopt policies or legislation that would ease the financial restraints and encourage developers to construct more Green House facilities.
For instance, [Amanda Fredriksen, AARP Texas advocacy manager,] said, the state could create a special Medicaid reimbursement rate for Green House homes and could give priority to developers of these homes when allocating new Medicaid beds.
It will be interesting to see whether anything comes of the request.
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Leigh Ann Otte is a freelance writer who specializes in health and aging issues. She covers finding and paying for senior care for OurParents. If you have any questions about this post or need help finding senior-care options for a loved one, call 1-866-483-4896 to speak with a care advisor in your area.
