[kaila]

I want health care to be about health care, not financing social problems. It should also be up to the patient to request home assistance, because hospitals are spending too much money (with social workers, care managers )to work on these social problems,.This results in decreased staffing of bedside nurses in the hospital. You have a primary care physician, it is up to you to see that doctor after discharge, and obtain the necessary prescriptions for home health, which I also think is way over abused. When I started nursing in the 1980’s , we expected patients to be participatory in their health care needs post discharge. Now, everyone needs handholding because they will not do anything for themselves, even including making post hospital appointments. Do you think that a home health aide to help with activities of daily living should be considered a “health” issue? I consider it a social issue. We are spending too much health care dollars on social problems, to the detriment of money spent on actual health care. I also think a patient who has - lets say- congestive heart failure- is non compliant because they are not taking their meds, and eating the wrong foods. Not because they are living alone. Heart failure is one of the top readmits in the Medicare population.Now, we as a society have to pay people to go into the homes to deal with this. It is a social problem, not a health care problem. Hospitals now are being made to not only deal with health, but with the social ills of the society.

[Wicket]

Wow. Do you not know any elderly people personally, or do you just dislike and disrespect the ones you do know.

Did you read my previous post. Hospitals work quite a bit along the lines of a financial model and it’s not because of abuse of the system by the elderly. As I said, my experience is with the adult foster care system. Hospitals discharge sicker and sicker patients so that they can collect the difference on the Medicare payment. The home health is needed more because of this practice.

I also know that there was no way my Mom after her knee surgery could have gotten to the hospital, nor after her cerebral hemmorhage. She was not non-compliant, she was just very ill (and discharged prematurely).

There certainly are abuses - people are getting lazier and more self-centered because they are used to being taken care of cradle to grave by our wonderful government welfare programs. But usually that abuse isn’t in the frail elderly.

Many elderly women live alone and away from their families They are the ones that need assistance - and it may be a partially social need, but social needs drive medical ones, particularly in the frail elderly and it’s cheaper for society to support someone at home, rather than them ending up back in the hospital.

Society does not have a high percentage of intact families living together with their older relatives. You may think that the elderly should just shut up and quit inconveniencing you, but you are going to be elderly at some point, so you might want to think that through.