Page 39 - Healthcare News Mar/Apr 2021

ARMBROOK VILLAGE ........................................................... 13 BEHAVIORAL HEALTH NETWORK............................................ 7 BFAIR, BERKSHIRE FAMILY & INDIVIDUAL RESOURCES........ 24 ENCOMPASS HEALTH ........................................................... 17 GOLDEN YEARS HOME CARE................................................ 12 HOLYOKE MEDICAL CENTER................................................. 11 LATHROP COMMUNITIES, THE ............................................. 13 MARY’S MEADOW.................................................................. 2
MERCY MEDICAL CENTER..................................... BACK COVER MEYERS BROTHERS KALICKA, P.C......................................... 31 RIVER VALLEY COUNSELING CENTER...................................... 7 WESTFIELD STATE UNIVERSITY ............................................... 5 YMCA OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD......................................... 23
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Boomers
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this huge generation confront questions about the care they need and how and where they want it provided.
But questions arise from this supposition — many of them, in fact, including whether there will be enough providers to care for all those people who will want to stay in their homes, and also whether the payers are willing and able to adjust to a changing landscape of need and pay for services they currently don’t cover.
Again, Flahive-Dickson said the pandemic has provided an intriguing lens for looking at the problem — and the future as well.
“If COVID has done anything for us, it has previewed what is to come,” she told HCN. “The pandemic has shown us that this surge in home care is a glimpse of the future. And it has provided this glimpse not only to healthcare professionals and the general population, but also to regu- latory bodies, such as Medicare and Medicare Advantage.
“They have had to relax a lot of rules,” she went on. “As the Medicare population is continuing to grow, Medicare benefits haven’t caught up to that, and this is a huge prob- lem. There are fewer than a dozen states that even offer non-medical home-care services to be paid for by a plan, and that plan is a singular plan, and that’s Medicare Advan- tage. In Western Mass., no one has a Medicare Advantage plan that offers the benefits of non-medical support, so it’s either out of pocket, or you have to qualify for one of the few programs that cover this.”
As for home-care workers, she said a number of demo- graphic trends (Boomers generally had smaller families than the generations that preceded them) and other issues point toward individuals needing someone outside the family to care for them — and real challenges when it comes to having a steady supply of workers to provide that care.
That’s another lesson from COVID, she said, referring to the law of supply and demand, which was certainly exac- erbated by a pandemic during which many had apprehen-
sions about working in others’ homes.
“Fewer and fewer family members are capable of being a
caregiver, either because there are fewer families, period, or ... because family members might be on a different coast,” she explained. “Just because you grew up in Springfield doesn’t mean you stay in Springfield.”
Aasheim agreed, noting that these demographic trends are just some of the challenges facing the Baby Boom gen- eration. Another is their own lack of preparedness for what is to come — financially and otherwise.
He said that only one individual in 10 has long-term- care insurance, and this is a matter to be addressed — just not when someone is 75 or even 65; those products have to be bought much sooner. Meanwhile, not enough mem- bers of this generation (and it’s not exactly unique in this regard) have their ducks in a row when it comes to needed documents — and needed preparation for poor health that often comes on suddenly and without much warning.
“What I try to focus on with the Boomers are the things they can do now, before that eventuality,” he explained. “This includes having discussions with your family about what your preferences are in terms of long-term care, gathering the documents together, getting power of at- torney and a healthcare proxy, all those things. That’s what I hammer away with them — get that stuff done now, while you’re still healthy and you have the energy and the mental capacity to deal with it, so your family doesn’t have to handle it in crisis mode a few years down the line.”
Unfortunately, he said, many don’t heed this advice.
“They all nod when I talk to them in these presentations, but are they going home and getting that stuff together? My thought would be, probably not,” he went on. “Because most of the calls I get are from people who are in crisis mode.”
Bankowski Chunyk is another who wishes that more Boomers would heed some advice. Or at least listen to family members telling them they can’t hear as well as they used to, and should do something about it.
She told HCN that the hearing industry talked a lot about the Baby Boom generation years (make that decades) ago, and how its size and advancing age would comprise
a great opportunity for audiologists, one they should be
prepared to seize.
Bankowski Chunyk did prepare, but she said the wave
hasn’t been nearly as big as all those experts predicted it would be, largely because of ... well, human nature, as well as lingering perceptions about hearing aids and what they say about those who wear them.
She said data shows that, between 1989 and 2019, the average age of an individual being fitted for a hearing aid for the first time fell from 66 to 65.
“I’m not sure a lot of progress was made getting people to address their hearing,” she said with some sarcasm
in her voice, adding that, while there are certainly more people of that age than there were several years ago, sheer volume is not creating the immense opportunity that was predicted back in the ’80s and ’90s.
Whether it will materialize eventually or not, she doesn’t know — but she does know the Boomers are perhaps more vain when it comes to hearing aids than the generations that preceded them, so her industry has some work to do to change those perceptions.
Bottom Line
Perceptions are not the only thing that will have to change if the Baby Boomers, and those in the healthcare system who will care for them, will adequately manage this sizable demographic shift.
Brennan is right when she warns about this challenge becoming an ‘us versus them’ scenario, but she’s also right (and her mother was right) when she said that no gets through life alive.
As this generation ages, it will present enormous chal- lenges to a healthcare sector that in many ways seems unprepared for what’s coming. That’s evidenced by the number of comments that began with the words ‘if things don’t change’ — comments referring to everything from workforce to accommodations for low-income seniors.
Only time will tell if things will, indeed, change. What is known is that the Boomers, as they have at every other phase of their life, will alter the landscape as they reach 75 — and beyond. And in all kinds of ways. v
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