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Finding a good senior care community is a common problem and will get worse with time as Baby Boomers hit their 70s and 80s and the staffing shortages at senior-care facilities deepen. A recent report measured the availability of accessible, affordable and quality long-term care for the elderly and disabled – as well as support for caregivers – in each of the 50 states and D.C. And it found a wide variation. Consider these facts:
· The cost of nursing homes averages 166 percent of median household income in Utah and the District of Columbia and 444 percent in Alaska.
· For every 1,000 residents, Minnesota has 108 home health and personal care aides, compared with 13 per thousand in Kentucky.
“This report will help states make and sustain targeted improvements so that people can live and age with dignity in their own homes and communities,” said Susan Reinhard, senior vice president at AARP, one of the organizations – along with the Commonwealth Fund and The SCAN Foundation – responsible for the study.
The report ranked states on 25 categories such as hospitalization of nursing home residents, percent of patients getting home and community based services and cost of nursing home care relative to state’s average household income.
The report found that states with the highest level of performance generally have enacted policies designed to improve access to services and choices in their delivery of care by offering alternatives to nursing homes.
One popular alternative is home care. Surveys typically show that nearly 90 percent of seniors prefer to stay at home, which has led to a boom in the home care industry. Research also has shown that home care is a little known and understood option. In fact, a 2010 survey conducted by the Boomer Project on behalf of the Home Instead Senior Care® network found that 49 percent of family caregivers overestimate the cost of non-medical home care on average by almost $6 per hour.
For more information about Home Instead Senior Care, contact Home Instead at 570-586-3135 or go to www.homeinstead.com/nepa. For more about the study, check out http://www.longtermscorecard.org/Report.aspx
