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A nursing home is a facility for the residential care of older people, senior citizens, or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as care homes, skilled nursing facilities (SNF) or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms have slightly different meanings to indicate whether the institutions are public or private, and whether they provide mostly assisted living, or nursing care and emergency medical care. Nursing homes are used by people who do not need to be in a hospital, but require care that is hard to provide in a home setting. The nursing home staff attends to the patients' medical and other needs. Most nursing homes have nursing aides and skilled nurses on hand 24 hours a day.
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health care provider.
An assisted living residence or assisted living facility (ALF) is a housing facility for people with disabilities or for adults who cannot or who choose not to live independently. The term is popular in the United States. Still, the setting is similar to a retirement home, in the sense that facilities provide a group living environment and typically cater to an older adult population. There is also Caribbean assisted living, which offers a similar service in a resort-like environment.
Elderly care, or simply eldercare, serves the needs of old adults. It encompasses assisted living, adult daycare, long-term care, nursing homes, hospice care, and home care.
Elder law is an area of legal practice that specializes on issues that affect the senior population. Some say the purpose of elder law planning is to prepare the elderly person for financial freedom and autonomy through proper financial planning and long-term care options. However, the purpose of elder law is not so narrow. Not everyone needs long-term care and not everyone is financially insecure. The purpose of elder law is to provide holistic legal advice that allows older persons and disabled individuals to preserve and protect their rights and values. Often these values are implemented by others, which is why thoughtful advance planning is necessary.
Long-term care (LTC) is a variety of services which help meet both the medical and non-medical needs of people with a chronic illness or disability who cannot care for themselves for long periods. Long-term care is focused on individualized and coordinated services that promote independence, maximize patients' quality of life, and meet patients' needs over a period of time.
The American Health Care Association (AHCA) is a non-profit federation of affiliated state health organizations that represents more than 14,000 non-profit and for-profit nursing homes, assisted living communities, and facilities for individuals with disabilities. The organization's president and CEO is Mark Parkinson, a former governor of Kansas. The National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) is a part of the AHCA.
A group home, congregate living facility, care home, adult family home, etc., is a structured and supervised residence model that provides assisted living and medical care for those with complex health needs. Traditionally, the model has been used for children or young people who cannot live with their families or afford their own homes, people with chronic disabilities who may be adults or seniors, or people with dementia and related aged illnesses. Typically, there are no more than six residents, and there is at least one trained caregiver there 24 hours a day. In some early "model programs", a house manager, night manager, weekend activity coordinator, and four part-time skill teachers were reported. Originally, the term group home referred to homes of 8 to 16 individuals, which was a state-mandated size during deinstitutionalization. Residential nursing facilities, also included in this article, may be as large as 100 individuals in 2015, which is no longer the case in fields such as intellectual and developmental disabilities. Depending on the severity of the condition requiring one to need to live in a group home, some clients are able to attend day programs and most clients are able to live normal lifestyles.
Geriatric care management is the process of planning and coordinating care of the elderly and others with physical and/or mental impairments to meet their long term care needs, improve their quality of life, and maintain their independence for as long as possible. It entails working with persons of old age and their families in managing, rendering and referring various types of health and social care services. Geriatric care managers accomplish this by combining a working knowledge of health and psychology, human development, family dynamics, public and private resources as well as funding sources, while advocating for their clients throughout the continuum of care. For example, they may assist families of older adults and others with chronic needs such as those suffering from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia.
Health advocacy or health activism encompasses direct service to the individual or family as well as activities that promote health and access to health care in communities and the larger public. Advocates support and promote the rights of the patient in the health care arena, help build capacity to improve community health and enhance health policy initiatives focused on available, safe and quality care. Health advocates are best suited to address the challenge of patient-centered care in our complex healthcare system. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) defines patient-centered care as: Health care that establishes a partnership among practitioners, patients, and their families to ensure that decisions respect patients' wants, needs, and preferences and that patients have the education and support they need to make decisions and participate in their own care. Patient-centered care is also one of the overreaching goals of health advocacy, in addition to safer medical systems, and greater patient involvement in healthcare delivery and design.
Patient advocacy is a process in health care concerned with advocacy for patients, survivors, and caregivers. The patient advocate may be an individual or an organization, concerned with healthcare standards or with one specific group of disorders. The terms patient advocate and patient advocacy can refer both to individual advocates providing services that organizations also provide, and to organizations whose functions extend to individual patients. Some patient advocates are independent and some work for the organizations that are directly responsible for the patient's care.
James Lewis Wilkes, II is an American lawyer. Born in Tampa, Florida, he is known for his advocacy on behalf of nursing home residents who have been victims of abuse.
Bet Tzedek is an American nonprofit human and poverty rights organization based in Los Angeles, California.
A continuing care retirement community (CCRC), sometimes known as a life plan community, is a type of retirement community in the U.S. where a continuum of aging care needs—from independent living, assisted living, and skilled nursing care—can all be met within the community. These various levels of shelter and care may be housed on different floors or wings of a single high-rise building or in physically adjacent buildings, such as garden apartments, cottages, duplexes, mid- and low-rise buildings, or spread out in a campus setting. The emphasis of the CCRC model is to enable residents to avoid having to move, except to another level of care within the community, if their needs change.
Nursing home residents' rights are the legal and moral rights of the residents of a nursing home. Legislation exists in various jurisdictions to protect such rights. An early example of a statute protecting such rights is Florida statute 400.022, enacted in 1980, and commonly known as the Residents' Rights Act.
The Eldercare Workforce Alliance (EWA), a project of the Tides Center, is a coalition of 35 US national organizations that came together to focus on short- and long-term healthcare workforce issues relating to older adults. The Alliance helped pass the 2018 Raise Family Caregivers Act, supports ongoing funding for the Title VII Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program, and advocates for including elder care in government and professional policies, including related questions of educating and maintaining the labor force such care requires.
As of 2017, approximately 1.4 million Americans live in a nursing home, two-thirds of whom rely on Medicaid to pay for their care. Residential nursing facilities receive Medicaid federal funding and approvals through a state health department. These facilities may be overseen by various types of state agency.
Elder rights are the rights of older adults, who in various countries are not recognized as a constitutionally protected class, yet face discrimination across many aspects of society due to their age.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted long-term care facilities and nursing homes around the world. Thousands of residents of these facilities, who are a high-risk group, have died of the disease.
Camilla Care Community is a 236-resident long-term care home in Mississauga, Ontario, owned by Partners Community Health. It is located next to Trillium Health Partners' Mississauga Hospital. The facility was taken over, temporarily, by the Province of Ontario in May 2020, as a result of extensive deaths from COVID-19.
References
- ↑ "National Consumer Voice". theconsumervoice.org. Retrieved May 18, 2024.
- ↑ Perley, Rebecca (2016). Managing the Long-Term Care Facility: Practical Approaches to Providing Quality Care. John Wiley & Sons. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-118-65478-1.
