August 31st, 2009

Reports the Morning Call:

Federal and state governments, as well as private organizations, recognize it costs significantly more to care for someone in a nursing home than it does to pay for the services for someone to remain at home. They also know Pennsylvania’s rapidly graying population makes the current system, which focuses the bulk of resources on nursing-home care, unsustainable.

”If we don’t start to take these steps toward getting more care at home, it’s going to be unaffordable to us as a state,” said Ray Landis, advocacy manager for AARP Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s overall population is expected to grow only modestly in the coming decades, according to projections from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The baby boomers are expected to wallop the state, though, with the number of Pennsylvanians who are 65 or older expected to jump to almost 2.9 million in 2030 from 1.9 million in 2000 — a spike of nearly 50 percent.

The expense of paying for so many people who are retiring and on the cusp of increasingly costly health problems is daunting.

Nursing homes get about 80 percent of the money Pennsylvania spends to help people who are too old or disabled to care for themselves, said Secretary of Aging John Michael Hall. In 2003 nursing homes were getting as much as 92 percent of the funds, with only about 8 percent going to home care and other services.

…

Adult day care programs, at-home care and senior housing complexes are some of the most effective programs for keeping seniors at home while giving them all the care they need, he said.

”We’re not saying to people that nursing homes shouldn’t be an option,” Hall said. ”But our position has been, and the policy we’ve been pursuing is, that it shouldn’t be the only choice.”

Find out more at the Morning Call.