Should Your Elderly Loved One Be in the Hospital?
Hospitals Can Be Dangerous
When a loved one experiences a health setback, the first reflex may be to call an ambulance or rush to the emergency room. But what if there was another option? Emerging data in the medical field points to home-based medical care for seniors as a more effective way to address many of the chronic ailments that accompany aging.
Benefits of Home-Based Primary Care
Most seniors would rather stay home than enter a care facility or endure a hospital stay, and the benefits of home care are numerous:
- Familiar surroundings
- Lower care costs
- Personal daily interaction with a caregiver
- Greater independence
- Faster recovery from illness
In addition to senior preferences and relief of financial burdens for families, in-home care options also reduce the amount of medical spending required by Medicare and Medicaid. For these reasons, some medical providers advocate a home-based primary care model that would keep seniors out of the hospital for treatment as often as possible. In this model, a team of care providers including doctors, nurses, social workers, and therapists would oversee patient care and provide intervention as needed. Patients suffering from mobility problems, depression, symptoms of chronic illness, and other similar ailments could receive the care they need while avoiding a trip to the hospital.
While this model is still relatively rare, it isn’t new. The Veteran’s Administration has been successfully providing home-based primary care since the 1970s, and other similar programs operate out of several medical facilities across the nation. When given the option, most seniors choose to remain home, and most families would rather see their loved ones in familiar surroundings than in a hospital bed or nursing home facility. With home-based primary care, that option becomes more realistic for a larger number of patients.