The Advantages of "In Home & Community Based Care"

I was recently interviewed for our podcast, Healthcare Insights where I talked about a recent position and advocacy paper written by advocacy staff at The Visiting Nurses Association of America. Healthcare in America is changing. It must. Medical costs and medical needs are rising dramatically. We at Ramona VNA & Hospice feel that the best way to receive care (in most cases) is at home, where the pt. is comfortable and the Medical Community comes to the pt., not the other way around. Homecare lowers the cost dramatically for the pt. and for the taxpayer. To illustrate these issues, at the time of posting this podcast and blog entry, I received the following information:

"U.S. residents with chronic diseases are more likely to forgo medical care because of high costs and experience medical errors than residents of other nations with such conditions, according to a study published in the journal Health Affairs, Reuters/Boston Globe reports. For the study, conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, researchers surveyed 7,500 adults, each of whom had at least one of seven chronic diseases-- high blood pressure, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis and depression. Participants include residents of Australia , Canada , France , Germany , the Netherlands , New Zealand , Britain and the U.S.

Fifty-Four percent of U.S. residents with chronic illnesses said that they did not receive recommended medical care, fill prescriptions or visit a physician at some point because of high costs, compared with 7% of participants in the Netherlands , the country with the lowest rate of foregone care. In addition, 41% of those in the U.S. said that they spent more than %1,000 on out-of-pocket medical costs last year, compared with lows of 4% in Britain and 5% in France , the study found.

According to the study, one-third of U.S. residents with chronic illnesses said that they had experienced a medical or medication error, received incorrect laboratory test results or experienced delays in test results, the highest rate among participants in any nation involved in the research. Almost half those in the U.S. said that they wasted time because of disorganized care or had received care of limited or no value during the past two years, the study found."

Home and Community Based Care, we strongly believe, can be one stirling answer to these issues.

Please take a few minutes and listen to our Podcasts and read the VNAA's paper entitled "Home and Community-Based Care: Building a More Effective Healthcare System"(This is a large download).

Thank you for all of your support.