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All of our lives we have been in a process of budgeting to live healthily. We have had to plan ahead for everything from doctors visits, dental work, and medication to less memorable things like Band-Aids and cough drops. While we could all confess to occasionally missing a night of teeth brushing due to circumstances, our experience shows us that cutting corners in the long run, like it does with everything else, comes back to get us in the end.

As we get older we have new challenges to take into account when it comes to taking care of ourselves. It seems that while it takes us longer to do what we used to do in leaps and bounds we also have to take on more responsibilities to keep up our health. These new responsibilities include more medications, doctor visits, and skilled services. These additions are not cheap. We and our families are usually the ones, not the government, that step up to the plate to handle these new costs in personal time and expenses. The majority of long term care services, 84% of all of them, are provided free of charge by family caregivers or paid out-of-pocket by families and those receiving care.

Just as we are tempted to skip out on a doctors appointment and spend the cash on something more enjoyable than getting poked and prodded, it is also tempting to cut back on paying for health care needs accrued with age. “Planning for Eldercare” at http://www.planforcare.org would recommend in your best interest against this temptation.
“Using care professionals is the most cost effective and efficient way to provide help for a loved one. Hiring professional advisers or providers to help with long term care is no different than using professionals to help with other complex issues such as car repairs, dealing with taxes, dealing with legal problems, or needing trained employees to help run a business. With their education and training, long term care professionals also bring experience that only comes from dealing with countless hands- on caregiving challenges”. “The 4 Steps of Long Term Care Planning”

Along with providing these necessary services Cooperative Home Care, ranked in the top 10 percentile among home care companies in the nation, can assist in finding a way to make it affordable. It isn’t intuitive that a home health agency would help find ways to make care financially possible, but this story of Tim, Debra, and their daughter Diana sheds some light on the situation.

Tim and Debra, both in their late 80’s, were adamant about staying in their home. Both were taking medications and were mobile with walkers. Their daughter, Julie was concerned about their safety in the home, especially with avoiding hazardous falls, bathing and preparing meals. Tim insisted he could drive his car, even though he was a hazard on the road. Julie had taken the car keys and therefore faced an argument every time she went to their home.

Lately, Julie noticed that the required medications were not being taken. Tim was a diabetic and required monitoring with his insulin and diet. Julie ordered “Meals on Wheels” which her mother quickly canceled. Frustrated at having no cooperation from her parents, Julie realized she needed outside help.

Checking the internet for resources in her area, she found the name of a Professional Care Manager in her area listed on her State Care Planning Council website. Jackie — the professional care manager and family dispute professional — had worked many times with families like Julie and her parents.

A meeting was arranged where all parties to the care giving were involved. Tim expressed that he did not want to give up his freedom driving to the store or other places he liked to go. Jackie suggested selling the car and using the money to pay a taxi or community transit. She arranged for Tim to see a geriatric physician to get his diet under control for his diabetes. Some in-home help with bathing, meal preparation and medication reminders was arranged by having a local non-medical home care company come in daily. Jackie gave Julie explicit instructions on how to organize the house to help prevent falls. To pay for the extra expense, Jackie introduced a reverse mortgage broker who explained how their home equity– on a risk-free basis –could provide the money they needed for their care.

Every service provider or adviser Jackie brought in worked side-by-side with her on the state care planning council. Jackie knew they could provide the needed help with expertise and integrity.
Julie found that using professionals gave her peace of mind and confidence that her parents’ care was in good hands.

There are ways to make health care happen. The home care Cooperative Home Care offers is one of the most affordable and statistically dependable options out there. We could take care of ourselves physically as young adults. Cooperative Home Care can help empower us to do it in the golden years.

Like many other industries, Home Care faces tough times. Both at the federal level and at the state, Home Care and Home Health are being targeted for budget cuts. These cuts are unwise for many reasons but are especially short-sighted because the ramification costs are enormous. According to a report published in 2007 by a Medicaid Committee headed up by Senator Charlie Shields, the cost to the state of Missouri for a nursing home bed is 6 times the cost for that same person enrolled in home health care. So by driving people out of home care and into nursing homes, the state will incur a six fold cost increase. This does not take into consideration the myriad benefits of home health care over that of institutional care. Nor does it factor in the wishes of the elderly to remain in their homes. I will writing about this topic more in the months to come as we follow the state and federal legislation and it’s affect on the clients of Cooperative Home Care here in St. Louis and the rest of the seniors in the state of Missouri.

Please contact your state senators and representatives and express your opinion on the value of home care. It is a republican value, a democratic value, an American value. Home Health Care, like the type we here at Cooperative Home Care provide, is a value that cuts accross all party lines and it is a real cost value to the taxpayers of Missouri.

Mitch Waks

CEO Cooperative Home Care

St. Louis, Missouri

I often suggest to people that if they could do as much planning for their retirement and old age as they do for a wedding or a vacation…they could have a much better quality of life! Look at it as an adventure and explore your options. Anything is possible today. One of the statistics that gets everyone’s attention is to mention that you could spend more time caring for your aging parents than you do raising your kids! Approximately 19.5 years will be devoted to helping your aging parents and 18.3 years to raising your kids. That is if they graduate and leave home and never have to move back in. Begin to wrap your arms around the amount of time that could be spent dealing with the many options in services, products, professionals and long term care facilities that exist in our community. As we learn from helping our parents, we can get inspired for helping ourselves. Boomers will age, and the sooner you get excited and embrace it the better your life can be. We are living on the average twenty years longer due to better health habits and medical technology. I’m here to help you by giving you the right questions to ask and providing you options so that you and your family can make educated decisions. We have a term called “aging in place” that refers to where we want to be to do our aging and that can accommodate our needs as we do so. Most people want to “age” at home. Because of wonderful in-home health care companies, retail products and adaptive equipment that helps us upgrade our homes to the safest environments possible, we can keep people in their homes three to five years longer today provided they have the resources to pay for these services. One of the important things that you should consider is developing a relationship with your home care agency. You want to make sure that you get the right match in caregivers and that service is flexible, trustworthy and reliable. Ultimately, you could be working with the home care agency you choose for a long time. Everyone has misgivings about having strangers come into their homes. Be sure you spend time making a list of all the questions and concerns you have.

• Do your research on home care services and find those who are in business for the right reasons.
• Have a conversation with them; communication is critical.
• Ask what motivated them to get into this business.
• Find out how long the home care agency has been in business.
• Be sure that they have a pristine track record and can provide good references.
• Establish the value the home care services company places on providing good customer service.
• Try to determine if they deliver what they say they will with consistency.
• Is their pricing competitive?
• Who is the home care agency affiliated with? Have they earned the merit of belonging to any associations, networks, or the BBB?

Joni Seivert, founder of Connections Unlimited, LLC

Long Term Care Health Insurance May Be Worth a Look

There are a number of interpretations by various studies of how long we may be expected to live. A team of Harvard researchers conducted a 21-year study (1980-2001) and considered factors like disease, income, access to health care and geographic area. Based on this study they came up with “8” Americas.

“America One,” comprised of about 10 million Asians, has an average life expectancy of 85. “America Two,” consists of approximately 3½ million low-income whites who live predominantly in the Dakotas, Iowa, Montana, Minnesota and Nebraska. This lower than normal income group lives an average of 79 years and demonstrates the best level of health among whites. The majority of the population, about 214 million, has a life expectancy of 78 and makes up “America Three” while “America Four” consists of poor whites in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley whose life expectancy is 75. “America Five, or Western Native Americans, live to an average of 73 as do “American Six” which is categorized as black-middle America. Making up “America Seven and Eight,” both with a life expectancy of 71, are low-income Southern rural blacks and high-risk urban blacks.

Another look at longevity, this time on a global level, is one calculated by the World Health Organization called HALEs (Healthy Life Expectancy). This is the average number of years a newborn can expect to live in “full health.” It’s a complicated calculation made by demographers and statisticians to adjust life expectancy to reflect how much of that time will be spent in poor health. Consider these contrasting numbers: a male in Afghanistan has a HALE of 35 years, but a life expectancy of 42 years while a male in the United States has a HALE of 67 years and a life expectancy of 75. Similar contrasts exist for females. A female in Afghanistan has a HALE of 36 with a life expectancy of 42 while a female in the United States has a HALE of 71 with a life expectancy of 80.

A more general overview is provided by the Center of Disease Control for Health Statistics. Their computations show that a child born in the United States in 2005 can expect to live 77.9 years, up from 77.8 in 2004 and continuing a rise dating back decades. U.S. life expectancy was 75.8 years in 1995 and 69.6 years in 1955.

The United States, a country of 300 million people, ranks 42nd in the world in life expectancy. One basic conclusion that can be drawn from all these studies is that we are living longer and need to make appropriate provisions for that prolonged existence. Long term care health insurance is one option to consider in preparing for one’s future.

I suggest that you talk to your insurance agent about long term care insurance.

Mitch Waks
Cooperative Home Care

I liked this and thought you would too…

No Nursing Home for Me – Long Term Care Insurance Instead!
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
When my wife & I reach the point in our lives that we need assistance in getting through the day, we will receive that assistance in our home. Home is where our hearts are. Home is where our memories were created. We don’t want to leave it.

We are not wealthy people and I do know that professional home care ranges from about $18-$22 per hour in Metro-Denver. So how is it going to happen? The care won’t be provided by our children. They have their own lives to lead. (Just between you and me, our children would take care of us, but they really won’t want to…and we really won’t want them to.) Besides, we do want our kids to come by, when they can, to spend some enjoyable hours together…not to bathe us or do other unpleasant “grunt work.”

Where will the money come from to pay for all this care? It won’t be from Medicare or Medicaid (we will never qualify for Medicaid and Medicare’s home care services are so limited as to be not worth considering in our planning).

In 2001 we purchased a good comprehensive long term care insurance policy that will pay for home care, has a lifetime benefit period, and inflation protection to increase the benefits to keep up with increasing costs of care. If you prefer spending as much time in your home as possible, you, too, should ask for a long term care quote from an insurance agent offering long term care insurance. That way you can prepare for your twilight years when you still have the time.

Full disclosure:
I am an insurance broker specializing in long term care and long term care insurance. I bought the stuff myself or I wouldn’t have the strong belief that I do about its value to my clients.

Ray Smith, CLU, CLTC, CSA
The Long Term Care Specialist
303-300-4337
www.raysmithltc.com

The following was written by Carl, whose mother we have been caring for since August 2005. It’s comments like these that keep us charging ahead. Thanks Carl for taking the time.

“My mother has multiple sclerosis and requires extra help with some of her day-to-day activities. My sister and I do what we can to help Mom, but our work and home lives preclude us from doing as much as we’d like. Thus, it’s been important to have a trusted home care professional in the house with Mom. This is where Mitch Waks and Cooperative Home Care come in.

At first, we had no idea what to look for in a home care agency. We initially hired another company based on the recommendation of one of Mom’s hospital case workers. Unfortunately, that company had a “scheduling conflict” and stranded Mom without the care she needed on her first day home from a long hospitalization. We asked the case worker for a second recommendation, and she gave us Mitch Waks’s name. Mitch immediately impressed me with his professionalism and his genuine concern for Mom’s well-being. We’ve been with Cooperative Home Care ever since. (I later called that case worker again, and told her that Cooperative was the company she should have recommended first!)

Mitch prides himself on hiring only the best and the brightest home care workers. In the last two years, Mom has had only two main caregivers (not counting the rare vacation fill-in). The first caregiver was replaced only because she moved on to further her career. Cooperative Home Care obviously understands what others don’t seem to: Continuity of care is crucial to the comfort and trust of his clients. Mitch obviously goes out of his way to ensure that his people are in this field because they want to be.

I think it’s fair to say that Cooperative Home Care is the main factor that has allowed Mom to stay in her own house, and at least delay the need for an assisted living facility. This has tremendous financial AND emotional value. Cooperative Home Care has relieved a lot of stress for my sister and me. More importantly, Mom not only has a caregiver that helps her maintain her household and personal needs, but a valued companion and friend as well. This means a lot to our entire family.

Based on all of this, I am happy to recommend Mitch Waks and Cooperative Home Care. They care, and it shows.”

Thanks for visiting our Blog. We hope to educate about our home care services and how you may qualify for in-home support from the government. If you have questions or concerns contact us today. Contact us here.

Sincerely,

Mitch Waks, CEO