Respite Care: Problems
Posted by Kim on June 3rd, 2007 / Print This Post
Debating the need for respite care for the elderly…in NH.
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ROCHESTER — A wedding takes someone’s primary caretaker out of town. The caretaker is exhausted and needs a break. Or the caretaker unexpectedly becomes ill.Strafford County Administrator Raymond Bower says he’s seen each of these kinds of cases, and with little if any trouble the person receiving care is able to stay at a nursing bed at Riverside Rest Home.
Whether the ailing person pays privately or through Medicaid, Bower said for years it’s been “fairly easy” for the facility to make the transition to temporary respite care.
But that’s not the case at many other nursing homes across the state, several officials say.
The problem with holding beds for respite care are numerous.
First, who is paying for the bed? Keeping the bed empty costs as much as having someone in it. The very nature of respite care can mean an emergency admit or a well planned admit…it’s the quick admits that can bring uproar to the nursing home. Usually nurses and aides have little info about the resident; often the resident has little time to prepare for such an admit. Both invite trouble, for all. When we don’t have information and assessments done, we see falls, dehydration and all the other problems associated with poor admissions process. At one place I worked at, we had 3 “Respite” beds and it was a revolving door. Resident turnover was ridiculous! Every weekend we had different people in the beds, and little to no info about them. Some of them were really sick or had advanced dementia, and we never got more aides to help. Behaviors, suicide attempts, depression were all seen from the residents. And the families thought these beds meant better care, and likened this to a stay at the Hilton. We did away with the program because of all this.
I think we need alternatives. ANY nursing home admission, for the convenience of family is faulty in essence. Families DO deserve breaks, why not get this from home health care options or relatives? How do we expect a person, an elderly one at that who is confused and vulnerable to begin with, to just accept institutional care for a “few days”? It’s not right.
June 8th, 2007 at 8:13 am
I agree with you I think that you should use home health agencies or get family to help but that is not always easy. I worked for a home health agency that did a lot of respite care but it was not easy to get people to cover on short notice. The head of the agency told me onetime that she might have to go through 2 dozen or more people to find someone to cover the job. One client’s family told me they called 3 agencies plus 12 private pay people before they could find help
June 9th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I agree with you that it is hard to put someone in a home temporarily for respite care. I don’t think people have any idea of how tough it can be to take care of someone Having gone through this both personally and having worked home health too I would like to put together educational materials to help people in this situation