Adult daycares are a great option for seniors who don't require 24-hour care. These programs provide family members with the peace of mind that their loved one is in good hands during the workday. Studies have shown that older adults who enroll in these senior care centers have a better quality of life. Adult day care can help to reduce loneliness through social interactions and provide psychological and behavioral benefits, especially for those with dementia.
Elderly care centers are a sensitive topic for many families. Assisted living facilities often have a negative connotation associated with them. However, they can be a valid and incredibly beneficial option for families with older loved ones. At some point, older adults will need more help than family members can provide.
Whether your loved one lives with you or not, home care is a great alternative to an elderly care facility. Home care occurs when a professional caregiver moves into your home or to the home of an elderly family member. A prerequisite is that the resident caregiver has a place to sleep and 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep in a 24-hour period. While resident caregivers live in your loved one's place of residence, they only provide care for 16 hours a day.
In addition, a new elderly resident caregiver relieves the current caregiver every few days, meaning there is no consistency in who is providing the care. If daylight hours are the times when your older loved one needs the most care, a good option is to use a resident caregiver. However, if you want to receive care 24 hours a day, 24-hour home care is a better alternative. Unlike resident caregivers, caregivers who work 24 hours a day don't live with older adults or need a private space.
One of the biggest differences between home care and 24-hour care is that 24-hour caregivers don't sleep while they work. Night caregivers work 8- to 12-hour shifts and stay alert while caring for loved ones 24 hours a day. Whether an older adult in your life has just had surgery and needs 24-hour care, or has an ongoing condition, such as dementia, consider caring for older people 24 hours a day at home. A major problem in offering comprehensive treatment is that many health insurance providers, including Medicare, don't pay for routine office visits without an underlying medical complaint.
Some private health plans are starting to use so-called performance-based or results-based care, in which the patient's overall health takes precedence over the procedures used to reach it. However, Medicare has not yet made this change. This makes it extremely difficult for geriatric care providers to monitor their patients and intervene before a health problem worsens enough to require hospitalization or major surgery. Physicians who practice this type of medicine must be creative in order to provide appropriate treatment.
Family members of older people can also help in this regard by finding medical complaints that justify making regular appointments with the doctor. However, the vast majority of health care for older people is not paid for by seniors themselves, but rather by private insurers and government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration.
