By its very definition, medical care is focused on helping a patient to get better, but in practice, certain types of care have proven to place more emphasis on the individual than other types. This is true of senior care, too. Even if that care might not be primarily medical, a patient-focused senior care has been shown to provide far better results than other types of senior care. In fact, the U.S. Institute of Medicine indicates that patient-centered care is “providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.” In the field of long term senior care, this mindset is more important than ever.
Studies have shown that when patients are highly satisfied with the care that they are getting, they are far less likely to switch doctors. Have you ever had to call your health insurance provider, and at the end of the phone call, you are typically asked to take a survey? Most people hang up on these, but those that don’t are able to express their opinions about a number of things that impact their health care and their health in general. That information is used to help determine things like the fact that patient-centered care is effective in nature. Of course, questions need to be asked that really show the nature of the data being collected and cannot be too vague or simplistic. But overall, when done right, these surveys show that when an individual’s needs and desires are accounted for and they are not treated like a product on an assembly line, their care is better.
It also provides for greater continuity. When someone stays with the same doctor–or caregiver, in this case–that professional gets to know the person they are assisting better and can provide a more intuitive care, and better detect minor changes in health that can have big benefits down the road.
If you’re looking for some sort of senior care for yourself or an elderly loved one, a patient-centered approach is likely to be the best way for you to go. In-home care, administered by a professionally trained caregiver, is the most obvious way that this can be applied. Here, a highly trained and responsible individual works one on one with whoever is receiving the care. It is more personal, more easily customizable to the unique set of needs and the personality of the one in need of care, and it also provides a high degree of companionship. This latter point is something that no other type of care can reproduce with the same levels of effectiveness.
So if you do need to start looking for senior care for someone, you might want to start out by looking at in-home care. It is cost effective, has a clear patient-centered focus built into the nature of the care, and when applied through a professional caregiving service, has the same highly trained and professional type service that you would expect to find in an institutionalized setting. It might not be the right choice for everyone, but it is typically a good starting point when you are beginning the senior care search.
Leave a Reply