Louisiana Community Choices Waiver: Case Study

Elderly people (women and men age sixty-five or older) (Macionis, 2005), Have many obstacles to face as they grow older, many of these obstacles involve social inequality. Not only do the elderly have to learn to deal with many forms of Ageism (the stereotyping and prejudice against individuals or groups because of their age), some also have to deal with the fact that they do not have enough savings or pension benefits to be self supporting, for most people over sixty-five, the major source of income is social security (Macionis, 2005). This forces many elderly Americans back into the workforce to continue to earn money to support themselves and or spouses. Although many elderly Americans may choose

Individual factors were found to be a predictor of functional limitation and frailty in older adults. Several studies showed that personal characteristics, such as ethnicity, female gender and age (Espinoza & Hazuda, 2015), gene (Interleukin-18 gene) (Mekli, Marshall, Nazroo, Vanhoutte, & Pendleton, 2015), education and health status, demonstrated an association with frailty (Chang et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2014; Fried et al., 2001; Mitnitski et al., 2015; Tocchi, 2015). Furthermore, it is clear that comorbidities such as diabetes mellitus (DM), stroke, hip fracture, history of coronary heart disease (CHD) and arthritis significantly increase the risk of frailty (Ambrose, Cruz, & Paul, 2015; Zaslavsky et al., 2013).

The Older Americans Act (OAA) funds critical services that keep older adults healthy and independent—services like meals, job training, senior centers, caregiver support, transportation, health promotion, benefits enrollment, and more. The Act is overdue for reauthorization—and Congress needs to seize this opportunity to update and renew its commitment to these programs and those they serve. To ensure America’s aging population is able to maintain and live healthy lives provisions are needed to the current OAA. These provisions include:

Taking care of the individuals that are getting older takes many different needs. Most of these needs cannot be given from the help of a family. This causes the need of having to put your love one into a home and causing for the worry of how they will be treated. It is important for the family and also the soon to be client to feel at home in their new environment. This has been an issue with the care being provided for each individual, which has lead to the need of making sure individuals have their own health care plan.

Our elderly population is living longer than ever before and not all of them are entering into a nursing home. They are choosing to stay in their own home or their caregiver is choosing it for them. Some caregivers are choosing to move their ageing love one in the home with them. Whatever the case may be, there is an increased need for some type of home health as it applies to the elderly population. “Medicare will pay the full cost of professional help only if the physician

Identifying and addressing health disparities for the rural elderly has been a great challenge. Problems of the elderly who live alone in poverty in Baker County are considerable when additional factors such as increased physical limitations, medical needs, and social isolation are taken into account. As a vulnerable population, the rural elderly are affected by their low socioeconomic standing, lower literacy rates, declining health, declines in cognitive functioning and relative lack of available nearby health resources. Seniors often live on a fixed income from pensions or other retirement plans and social security. Additionally, inability to purchase affordable health insurance,

Benefit provisions vary from one state program to another, but federal guidelines require all states to provide a minimum benefit package, including hospital inpatient and outpatient care, physician care, and many other services. In the area of long-term care, all states are required to pay for nursing home care, and they must also pay for home healthcare for those who are “nursing home eligible” which are those who would need nursing home care if they did not receive home care. And although federal guidelines do not require it, an increasing number of states also pay benefits for home and community-based services. These services may include personal care, home health aide services, rehabilitation, therapies, intermission care, homemaker services, and other services. In addition, a few states pay for long-term care services received in an assisted living residence. Unlike Medicare, with its highly restrictive conditions for payment of nursing home or home care benefits, Medicaid generally meets the need for long-term care (for those who eligible). Medicaid pays benefits for personal and supervisory care even if skilled care is not needed, and the program covers ongoing care needed to cope with a chronic impairment, not just care required for a short time to facilitate recovery from an acute illness or injury. However, there are some important limitations to Medicaid long-term care benefits: (1)

The Long-Term Care Act was to benefit and work with seniors to improve their overall well-being. The Long-Term Care Homes Act guarantees to help residents living within the long-term care system to receive dependable, high-quality, and safe care for the residents. It is often common for seniors to adjust when placed in long-term care as this is a new and challenging transition for the senior and their families. The commonplace goal is to have a long-term care home environment where residents feel comfortable and at home, where residents are treated with the respect they deserve, and have the proper supports and services that cherish to their particular needs for their overall health and well-being. These services are physical and mental health related services- especially one that relates to the Community Worker Program such as Community and Social Workers that are crucial in a senior’s life often.

If these zoning and land use issues continue unabated, Medicare reimbursement rates persist in their decline, and elderly populations also increase, many communities may find themselves without enough new modern community facilities to respond to the needs of same-sex elderly couples, seniors with varying faiths, chronically ill, and disabled seniors. Zoning can work against the person-centered and community based medical model designed to improve quality of care and lower the cost of health care. The Independence at Home Act encourages this health care service model. The number of communities that hold on to exclusionary zoning codes could be a measure of the failure of the Independence at Home Act. Whereas, measuring the number of communities that adopt inclusionary codes can be a measure of its success.

In these services they would usually be offered help with activities of daily life, such as eating or bathing. Some home services also give them other benefits such as residential services, personal care or case management. To give more open details on experiences of Medicaid beneficiaries who need home and communities based services Musumeci and Reaves discuss nine seniors who are disabled and who live in different states. Those include people with different kind of disabilities which can be either developmental, physical or intellectual and issues such as autism, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis and their functional limitations that are there because they aged (Musumeci & Reaves, 2014). Based on interview that were given from these people to the Kaiser Commission in 2013 based on Medicaid and uninsured, these peoples’ profiles clearly show us how beneficiaries funds, well-being, status of their employment are affected by the coverage of Medicaid and the role these services play in their daily lives (Musumeci & Reaves, 2014). In the last years states are trying to work on rebalancing long-term care system by dedicating more spending to home and community care rather than institutional care. The reason is this being the efforts that are driven by beneficiaries who are

More and more people will need care in old age, and if they are disabled. Millions of Americans suffer from a chronic illness, or some kind of disability, and many of these people will have limits in their daily activities. Some people experience

Many people would argue that it is wrong to label the old as ‘economically independent’. An example of this would be that the age of retirement can be different for different jobs. Many men in their fifties are no longer working, whereas many women have to work up to the age of sixty five before accessing the state pensions as they do not do as many manual jobs such as building. Also, whilst there is an increase of older of people the dependency ratio also rises in the ageing population. This may be a way of making up for the decline of dependent children.

The disproportionate spending and costs of nursing home long term care services relative to HCBS has not gone unnoticed and has been recognized on both the federal and state level. In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court case Olmstead v. L.C. (527 U.S. 581) re-affirmed the legal right of qualified individuals with disabilities, of which include the elderly, to choose long term care in a community-based setting over an institutional environment. The case ruled that states must provide these services in the most appropriate integrated setting for those qualified.11,17,18 On the state level, Rhode Island has long recognized the disproportionate spending on nursing home care and the potential cost-saving of HCBS such as assisted living care. The state government has consequently long sought to rebalance the long term care system originally through the use of nine HCBS 1915(c) waivers (Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, Elderly and Disabled, Elderly, Personal Choice, Habilitation, Assisted Living, Respite x3). In 2002, a joint resolution from the Rhode Island House and Senate was drafted and called for a multi-year approach to long term care financial and regulatory reform. In 2005 another resolution was drafted calling for the investigation of the need and financing options for community-based long term care. Both of these resolutions together led to the Perry-Sullivan Long-Term Care Service and Finance Reform Act passed in 2006

The aim of this paper is to explore the importance of independence for older adults. At the same time a research and analysis of the factors that assist elders to remain independent was performed. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, in 2013 36 percent of the population in the United States was 65 or older with some type of disability (A Profile of Older Americans:2014 pg. 14). The American Association for Homes and Services for the Aging, 2010; U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2010, disclosed that approximately 745,000 elders chose to live in a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) or life care community (Marx et al., 2011).

Welfare facility for the elderly requiring long-term Care: Living facility for older people who require long-term care