Essay On Long Term Care

The function of Long-term Care is to manage critical infusions, continue the medical stabilization of the patient, and if needed continue respiratory functions with use of mechanical ventilation (Miller, 2016). The long term acute care hospitals known as LTACHs specialize in patients care who have become so critically ill and need to stay beyond the normal short stay requiring more specialized care than what would be available in an acute care facility. The LTACHs are not rehabilitation hospitals they care for the patient until they are ready to be transferred to a skilled nursing facility to work on their motor skills on their way back to a normal life or to nursing homes where they will be cared for because they can no longer live on their

This unit is not a home for permanent stay or a long term care program. Inter professional teams continually will assess patients to ensure that the person is in the appropriate level of care. Inter professional team will assist the patient and their family in preparation for transition or discharge to the most appropriate care setting for the patient.

Palliative care is specialized medical for people with serious illness. The goal of palliative care is to improve quality life, and to make the patients last days more comfortable for the patient’s and their families. The doctors decide who should be on hospice, but it is up to the patient’s and their families to make the decision. When the doctors suggest hospice or palliative care they have done everything they could for the patient’s. If the patients decide to go on hospice or palliative care, they have a choice of going home, or to a nursing home to live out the rest of their days.

But an epidemic of aggressive medical care treatments such as too many procedures,too many blood tests provided by hospitals or clinics are costing our nation 's healthcare system billions of dollars each year. Despite being recognized to be harmful to patients and their loved ones, “aggressive care” is still administered to the majority(75%) of patients, concludes a study done by the American Society of Clinical Oncology(Johnson,2016). After watching the videos and reading the article on medical care my stance on aggressive healthcare is it is unnecessary and I am against it. What people don 't realize is that if we keep providing aggressive health care treatments to individuals suffering from serious illnesses or people living through the end of life it can take a human toll in pain, mental or emotional suffering, severe implications and even death. Most people prefer to die peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones and want care to focus on comfort, but that is not always the case for many patients who die in hospitals hooked up to hospital machines in pain and suffering to hold on for their dear lifes.

Overtime and marital strain Table 11 revealed that marital strain was not dependent on the duration of overtime spent at the hospitals. The reason may be that overtime was not the problem on regular basis. It depends upon the emergencies occurred at the hospital. The need of professional, skilled nurses will increase as the population ages while the shortage of nurses is the reality already. Nurses are stressed further by inconvenient working hours like extensive working hours, weekend work, evening and night-time work, insufficient breaks during working shift, and even having to take on two jobs in order to make reasonable pay.

This means they must be discharged and return home (Martin). This presents the family with providing the care themselves or paying for private services. This cost can be prohibitive for a person on Medicare. People want to plan for their lives, not plan for their deaths. Talking or even thinking about hospice and advanced illnesses can be difficult.

Most providers in a managed care setting are providing care for about 2,500 to 4,000 patients annually to ensure they can make a living from their day to day work week. Not only are the burned out primary care providers interested in the concierge model of care, so are patients. Patients who seek the concierge model of care do believe that the current model of care is working for them. Most patients are elderly or have multiple health issues or needs that the typical 10 to 15-minute appointment just wouldn’t fulfill. (S. Jones, personal communication, February 19,

Advance directives help inform health care providers with the patient’s wishes on how they would like to be treated medically. Advance directives allow a patient to be in control of their treatment plan as well as end of life choices. Therefore, when the time comes, and the patient is no longer able to make these decisions, there is a legal document that has been put in place to carry out the patient’s wishes. Advance directives are critical documents that are often ignored because of the uncomfortableness the subject of end of life care brings up. Advance directives are most common in the geriatric population since people often associate advance directives primarily with end of life decisions.

The assumption is that only nurses who work in the hospital setting are subjected to nurse fatigue, but this problem affects in the rehabilitation facilities, home care nursing, specialized clinics. Nurses work long hours to compensate for the shortage of nursing staff within most healthcare facilities. When nurses are tired to the point of exhaustion critical errors can be made that would not normally occur if they were working regular hours. Peplau theory focuses on interpersonal relations between nurses and patients which is valuable in developing interventions for specific care within the clinical

Many people are forced to not buy the drugs they need to survive, which can result in deaths. Even some people that can afford their medicine have a very hard time finding a way to pay for their prescription. The government needs to change it, whether it be importing drugs from Canada, or enforcing price controls. The prices are far too high, and that is why millions of Americans do not take their medicine. Millions of people not taking their prescription is way too many, in fact one person not taking their medicine is too many.

The regulation was changed in 1998, now Hospice benefits can no longer be exhausted with new terms outlined as such, two-90 day periods of care, followed by an unlimited number of 60 day periods of care. Which sums up, that Medicare beneficiaries can live more than 210 days and no longer fear that they might not die in time and exhaust their Hospice coverage. In the past that must have been stressing on the ill person and their family, that they could be financial strapped with medical bills. With the change in Hospice care coverage, this service has grown significantly. Unfortunately though, CMS and Congress felt that unlimited access to end of life services has once again become a financial incentive to keep beneficiaries in

Dr. Daniel Ivankovich wants to reach out to the people who cannot seek medical attention since they do not have money to pay for it. He thinks it is unfair for someone’s health to continuously worsen, only because they are not insured. When Ivankovich became aware of this issue, he opened his own clinic and promised to help people whether or not they were able to pay for it. Dr. Ivankovich has performed over 600 surgeries and helped more than 100,000 people during his career as a surgeon. He “knows he can’t fix everybody” he said, “but my goal is to be the battering ram to help break down the barriers to get these patients the care and the resources they need" (Ivankovich).

It is my analysis of the financial burden and decisions we had to make for my grandmother is that as the demand increases for long-term care as the baby boomer population ages, Medicare and Medicaid will be forced to reevaluate how they pay for long-term care. Many states are not equipped to handle the comprehensive needs of this aging population (Ford, Henderson, & Handley, 2010). Also, families are forced to take on enormous financial burdens due to the lack of coverage by Medicare (Can Medicare, 2015). The are no true pros to this situation. The main cons are the financial burden that many families make in this situation.

Long-term care can be summed up as a variety of services to help an individual meet both the medical and non-medical needs of those with chronic illnesses, disabilities and the elderly. Long term care is provided to those who cannot care for themselves for a long period of time and need daily assistance to live a fulfilling life. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) Making a decision about long term care can be one of the most difficult decisions for families to make. There are also a lot of things to take into consideration when choosing a long term care facility. Often times than not, it takes a significant event for someone to realize that they need long term care.

Immigrants come from their countries to seek better opportunities such as access to health care and health insurance. By the cost of health care being so high it causes many immigrants to not insure themselves or their families. Uninsured immigrants do not just affect illegal immigrants but those that are legal as well. Camarota (2009) states that, “in 2007, 33.2 percent of