Posted on: Monday, November 18, 2002
EDITORIAL
Will you still feed me when I'm eighty-four?
Many baby boomers are in denial about who's going to take care of them when they're old and frail. Too many assume family, the state or Uncle Sam will come through.
So it should be something of a wake-up call to see the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' new Web site rating the care provided by nursing homes nationwide.
While many of us have vowed rather to die than go to a nursing home, the fact is, nursing homes are doing a brisk business. And though there are other options, such as assisted-living facilities, the need for nursing homes is not going away.
In light of that, it's useful to have access to the results of government inspections and other data to help weed out substandard facilities.
However, we're not entirely sure how to interpret the Web site's quality measures, such as the percentage of residents with loss of ability in basic daily tasks, residents with pressure sores, residents in pain, residents in physical restraints, residents with infections and short-stay residents with delirium.
That kind of data doesn't really tell us whether those nursing homes have expertise in those areas of elder care or whether the facility is plagued with mishaps and unanswered calls for help. They just break down the population.
At best, the federal data should be used as a rough starting point in evaluating a care home for oneself or a family member. The best advice is to visit, visit, visit.
The good news is that nursing homes are more likely to improve under the scrutiny presumably brought on by a baby boomer population whose parents, or who themselves, are facing geriatric dilemmas.
We've all gotten wind of the fact that while Medicaid and Medicare pay for most U.S. nursing home patients, the funding doesn't really cover a whole lot.
That said, we hope First Lady Vicky Cayetano's program to establish long-term-care financing and a Hawai'i Long-Term-Care Benefits Fund is making headway.
The program would provide basic payments of around $70 a day for up to a year's worth of care for the elderly. At least it's something. We'll continue to cheer on the process for the simple reason that Islanders desperately need a basic safety net for the twilight years.
