While the different types of long-term care have different costs, overall it is a very expensive form of healthcare. In 2008, it cost $68,000 for one person to reside in a semi-private room for only that year. While home healthcare costs have a significantly cheaper facevalue than nursing homes, an average of $18,000 for the year of 2008, the patient would only receive an average of three visits per week rather than the round-the-clock-care provided by nursing homes. These are just two examples of the extremely high costs of long-term care, which of course do not include medication or anything else that may arrise (What, 2008).
Due to the extremely high costs of long-term care, access to this form of healthcare is very limited. In fact, nearly 79% of people who need long-term care live at home or in community settings rather than the potentially more helpful institutional setting. Also, 84% of the hours of assitance provided to patients were unpaid, meaning that it would be classified as informal care provided by friends or family (FCA, 2005). This poses many issues; the first one being that the friend or family member likely has little to no training in geriatric or disability care, putting both themselves and the patient at potential risk for physical harm. Also, an informal caregiver is put under a financial, and many times emotional, to care for this person with no stipend, often in addition to a caring for a family and/or working a full time job.
There is a huge incentive for long-term care providers and facilities to abide by the quality standards set by the federal government through the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 (OBRA-87). If the provider or facility does not meet the minimum standards, they are not eligible to admit Medicare or Medicaid. (Shi, 2008). After seeing the enormous costs of long-term care, it is easy to see that without the ability to admit Medicaid or Medicare, any long-term facility or provider would sink like a brick. There are approximately 185 standards that need to be met, and they are organized into seventeen categories. They include things from dietary services to resident rights. The sixth category is “Quality of Care,” which states “Each resident must receive, and the facility must provide, the necessary care and sevices to attain or maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being…” (Shi, 2008). It goes on to provide specific services that need to be offered in order to maintain a high standard of living.
Overall, while the quality of long-term care is excellent, the costs are outrageous. Hopefully, our blog will help in discovering a way to make these high-quality services more accessible to those in need of long-term care. Stay tuned for our reform proposals, and we are looking forward to your feedback to help us in making our reforms more effective!
"FCA: Selected Long-Term Care Statistics." Family Caregiver Alliance. National Center on Caregiving, 2005. Web. 17 Feb. 2010.
"Medicare.gov - Types of Long-Term Care." Medicare.gov - The Official U.S. Government Site for People with Medicare. 25 Mar. 2009. Web. 17 Feb. 2010.
Shi, Leiyu, and Douglas A. Singh. Delivering Health Care in America A Systems Approach. 4th ed. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett, 2008. Print.
"What is LTC ?" National Clearinghouse for Long Term Care. 22 Oct. 2008. Web. 17 Feb. 2010.
