Traditional skilled nursing is on the way out
Posted by Patti on September 21st, 2007 / Print This Post
Utah advocates for elderly citizens are starting to educate others about the alternatives to nursing homes.
MIDWAY — Home is not only where the heart is for aging Americans; that is where they are better off and state funds for senior care programs are better spent — six times better at least.So say Utah senior advocates, government-agency representatives and care providers. They are so sure that promoting independence of individuals is healthier to both seniors and to state coffers that they want a freeze imposed on any public funds spent on long-term care facilities.
A special panel of lawmakers reviewing state spending on Medicaid and other programs for senior and disabled Utahns will receive the proposal at its next meeting Oct. 3. The lawmakers will make a recommendation by November, and the full Legislature would still have to act on it during the 2008 general session beginning in January.
“This is simply recognizing that the traditional skilled nursing at a care center model of caregiving is on the way out,” Alan Ormsby, director of the state Division of Aging and Adult Services, said Tuesday. “I would never say there isn’t a place for long-term care centers. But when you can provide safe and often more effective services at home and at less than a sixth the cost for most seniors, we have to at least begin moving in that direction.”
I like that statement: …”traditional skilled nursing at a care center model of caregiving is on the way out”– and I think it’s starting to come to reality. Almost everyone would benefit from a change of this model; nursing homes are not a HOME no matter how hard they try. The culture changes we see within nursing homes, the Eden type models, are good. But nothing replicates being at HOME. In control of your own destiny and in charge of your own life. The more resources that are fed into this the better off we all are.