Long-term care needs centralised access point to guide families
LONDON: A centralised access point to long-term care would fill “a gaping hole” in the health and long-term infrastructure by helping “guide families through the process of finding and navigating care options for their loved ones,” including “determining if home care, institutional care or assisted living is the best option,” three senior living and care industry experts say in a new opinion piece.
Anne Tumlinson, CEO and founder of ATI Advisory; David Grabowski, Ph.D., a healthcare policy professor at Harvard Medical School; and Robert Kramer, founder and fellow at Nexus Insights and co-founder and former CEO of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, writing in The Hill, make a case for a “one-stop shop” to meet the ongoing long-term care services and support needs of older adults and their families.
“Millions of families” at all income levels grapple with the challenges of finding the right care for their elderly loved ones “with little support or guidance to help them find the resources they need,” according to the trio. On Twitter, Kramer said the industry is at a “pivotal moment” and urged policymakers to consider additional investment in the aging services infrastructure.
That investment, Kramer, Grabowski and Tumlinson wrote, should include creating community-based healthy aging hubs that could assess health and financial needs, create and maintain a care plan, identify appropriate services and providers, and help secure funding from both public and private sources. In contrast to senior living referral agencies, which profit from referral fees paid by assisted living communities and nursing homes in their networks, they said, independent advisers would steer families and older adults to the solutions that best meet their financial, care and social needs.
President Biden included an expansion of Medicaid-funded LTSS as part of his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. That plan proposes spending $400 billion over eight years on Medicaid home- and community-based services.
“Biden’s proposal to invest in caregiving support is an important step, but it must be paired with new infrastructure to help families navigate and manage our complex systems for caring for and finding the needs of older adults,” Tumlinson, Grabowski and Kramer wrote.
