Articles Posted in Senior Health Care

Your ailing father or mother prepared ahead of time with long-term care insurance or was finally accepted in the Medicaid program. The resources now are available to receive the long-term care they need. Considering the seriousness of their ailments, skilled nursing assistance that can only be provided in a traditional nursing home might be necessary. But what home to choose?

There are no easy answers when it comes to choosing the best nursing home for a loved one. The task is made all the more difficult by the horror stories that often come out of these facilities. Reminders of seniors who are neglected, abused, and living in misery seem to constantly make newspaper headlines. How do you ensure that the facility where you send your loved one will be a place where they can thrive in their golden years, despite their health set-backs? Is there any way to best research possible options or is it all just a matter a luck?

Fortunately, more and more tools are being created and made available to the public to efficiently compare different nursing homes in consideration. For the longest time the only option was to take a look at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid’s (CMS) “Nursing Home Compare” website. While the location is helpful, it sometimes does not have the detailed information about past events or certain quality of care standards that some families might be looking for. Now there is another tool available–ProPublica’s “Nursing Home Inspect.” The data from ProPublica is culled from CMS report releases, but it is organized in such a way as to provide more direct and accessible information for those needing to get information quickly. All told the website currently has information covering almost 118,000 deficiencies at 14,565 nursing homes. This is quite a significant achievement covering the vast majority of facilities in the country. The tool will likely expand in the future, as ProPublica aims to continuously add more information as CMS officials release more and more inspection reports.

Elder care advocates know that senior financial exploitation is a very real, damaging issue. However, even among those working directly on the problem, there is disagreement about how many seniors fall victim to these exploits each year. The underlying problem is that the vast majority of cases are never reported, meaning that estimates about the scope of the problem rely on often unreliable predictions. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that about 13.5% of the entire adult population is the victim of some type of fraud or scam each year. When trying to get a gauge on the effect on seniors specifically, most research focuses on random phone surveys where seniors are asked if they’ve ever lost money in one of those unscrupulous ways.

But are those phone surveys reliable? Many fraud investigators have their doubts.

For example, as discussed recently in the New York Times, a 2011 National Victim Profiling study from the AARP attempted to test the accuracy of phoning seniors and asking about their history with frauds and scams. The research involved calling nearly 800 seniors who were known to have been victims of a scam. The senior names were taken directly from police records across the country. Amazingly, when this group was called, only 40% admitted to having been scammed–resulting in a staggering 60% error rate.

We’ve all seen the ads: smiling seniors lounging at the pool or playing golf, laughing, and enjoying the sunshine as a voice-over speaker describes the available space at a new senior living location. Retirement communities have long been popular, but many New York elder care advocates explain that these assisted living locations are becoming more sought-after than ever. Unique senior communities are popping up across the country at a steady clip catering to more and more specific niches in an attempt to closely meet the needs of certain segments of the senior population.

Some of the most popular niche senior living facilities (besides those around beaches or golf courses) are “university-based retirement communities.” These locations are built around college campuses in order to provide seniors with the opportunity to attend campus events and even sit in on classes. Many local residents have opted for this choice when conducting New York senior care planning.

Many other communities are being built that center around specific hobbies and activities. Across the country new facilities have recently been built targeting seniors who want to become artists, providing help for those seeking to learn how to paint or write their first novel. Another senior facility is even referred to as an “astronomer’s village” and is geared toward stargazers with every living unit equipped with a built-in telescope. Yet another targets “aging hippies” where residents are encouraged to make their own living space and practice sustainability techniques.

The Star Tribune recently profiled Hubert Humphrey III–a former favorite son of Minnesota–who is now in a new role in Washington D.C. helping to enact national senior care policy that might affect older Americans across the country. Humphrey was recently chosen to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Older Americans. He was chosen for the position in large part because of his previous advocacy on the AARP’s national board of directors.

The new federal office is engaged in many different battles, all aimed at improving the lives of the growing class of American seniors and protecting them from falling victim to financial predators. Our New York elder law attorneys understand the challenges faced by so many older Americans and appreciate the need to enact common sense safety steps at the federal level.

The Office of Older Americans was actually created as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It was created to safeguard the rights of those over 62 and ensure they are properly educated about their financial options. Assistance in these and similar matters is all the more important now in a world with stagnant retirement accounts and rising healthcare costs. Each New York elder law attorney at our firm works first-hand on many of these goals, helping local residents seeking to craft plans to protect their long-term financial and medical well-being.

Elder law issues are growing in importance on a daily basis. The “graying” of America is a well-documented demographic trend. However, many still under-appreciate the true scope of the situation and the way in which it will continue for decades. For example, according to the AARP, more than 7,000 Americans turn sixty five years old every day. Clearly the number of seniors in the country is growing larger–but they are also living longer. Today there are roughly 5.5 million residents eighty five years or older–by 2050 there will be 20 million people in the country over eighty five. Our New York elder law attorneys appreciate the challenges we already face in providing appropriate care to seniors today. The challenge will only magnify in the years to come.

Making accommodations for the aging population will require work at all levels–from changes inside individual families up to federal government policy adaptations. Many believe that the task will fall heaviest on local communities, which are often on the front lines of these social policy situations, working to ensure senior community members actually have basic services available to maximize their quality of life. A new television program has recently been launched to share information about these concerns, entitled “Aging Well in America.” As discussed last week in Gross Pointe Today, the show is being spearheaded by a professor at the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University.

The show includes discussions of many issues similar to those faced by local families who have visited our New York elder law attorneys. For example, one program details the issue of “downsizing” where seniors move from long-time residences to smaller, more manageable homes. The gerontology professor explained that it is important for adult children not to rush aging parents through this process. Mental adjustments have to be made even before logistical adjustments.