In these modern days, most of the houses are considered to be the best place to age happily. This is because most of the elder citizens want to age at home instead of moving into any senior living facility. However, this is a choice that is not free from challenges, often numbering too many.
- There is the most significant risk of social isolation
- There can be limited access to medical care
- The required supportive services may not be available and
- There is a potential for falls and other injuries due to negligence or inadequate attendance.
All these make living in a home an unwise, unfavored and unsafe choice, especially for the frail and ailing adults.
However, there is a useful and effective solution to this in the form of community-based housing. This is probably the best resource for senior care and services that do not involve any frequent impediments.
A recent research report published by Stuart Butler and Marcela Cabello of the Brookings Institution states that there are a few exciting models for such community-based services. They also make a few important recommendations for important ways in which houses can be used as a ‘hub’ for senior services.
Far beyond the needs of seniors
Using housing for aging is ideally the chassis for senior care services.
- Such community services reach far beyond the basic services and meet all of the needs of aging citizens.
- In this housing-based service models, children and young families can also be benefited.
However, it includes important ideas that are critical for the seniors that will keep them happy while living in and with their communities.
- First, the keys to allow older adults to stay in their respective homes should be identified. To start with, it is important to find out whether the house in which the seniors will live is safe or not. It is also needed to ensure that the place to stay is affordable. This may sound pretty obvious but it is seen that often the older adults have housing that is neither safe or affordable. In such situations, they need to choose one or the other.
- Second, housing must include access to direct services such as health checkups. It must also allow case management services that will help then to find and avail important assistance such as transportation, home health aides, and others.
Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the importance of recognizing the comprehensive diversity in housing along with the varying need of services for older adults.
- This is due to the fact that people coming from different ethnic backgrounds will have very unique and different needs.
- In addition to that, an older adult may also face different types and levels of challenges especially if they live in a rural community.
Therefore, it is primarily required to understand that older people living in the suburbs or in the major cities will have an easy time as compared to the suburbanites. It is commonly seen that these people often are the risk of facing social isolation.
Therefore, delivering home care services to seniors living in the suburbs can be time-consuming and costly. If you want to make a mark in the home health care industry then before applying for Home health care jobs you must understand these variances and needs.
The bureaucratic challenges
There are also a few bureaucratic challenges faced in this regard to the impedes providing safe and affordable home health care with all its main services and supports. These bureaucratic challenges include:
The State Medicaid programs typically does not coordinate the different aspects that will encourage or enable the seniors to age safely and happily in their place. These aspects include:
- Housing
- Transportation
- Eligibility rules for diverse services.
All of these aspects can vary significantly. While a person may be considered as eligible to receive Medicaid supports and care services for the long term but may not qualify for receiving the transportation services that may be essential for staying and aging at home.
- Typically, it is found that the government agencies do not share data that may be crucial for identifying the specific and most severe areas that need special focus so that the home health care agencies can design programs that work best.
- The most significant of all bureaucratic challenges are however the payment systems that typically discourage the agencies from working more effectively and productively in order to improve the overall wellbeing of senior citizens.
Apart from that, there are the cross-agency problems. The state department funds different programs to reduce the cost of health care but none of these savings ever find their way back to the agency.
Lastly, there is a communication issue that is vastly noticeable among social workers. Not only them it is found that even the health care policy authorities struggle to communicate with each other.
List of solutions
There are however a few solutions in which successful models can be built in order to improve the wellbeing of the seniors while they age in their place. These steps can be ideally followed by all including the communities, health systems, and governments. These steps include:
- Creating more coordinate budgets
- Better planning
- Maintaining proper coordination with the government agencies
- Building better partnerships and relationships
- Creating more opportunities for Medicaid and Medicare managed care systems
- Improving data sharing and collection
- Working with different community organizations such as senior villages and faith communities.
All these steps are proven to provide the patients and senior citizens to have a risk-free life with optimal wellbeing. This will also help the health systems to improve and be more ambitious and even provide on-site wellness advice.
Therefore, in short, housing-based care delivery for the seniors will have a new level with the large senior population now being able to enjoy Medicare managed care due to the Medicare Advantage and the CHRONIC Act that is passed recently for the first time. In addition to that, the improved data sharing and collection will also help the agencies to learn which interventions work best.
