Health Care | Elder Law

What is a Health Care Proxy

As people get older it is important to make plans for when they may become incapacitated and need someone to make health care decisions for them. There are two different kinds of documents that could be in place to plan for when your health makes you unable to make decisions.

A living will spells out what you want to happen if you are unable to talk to your doctors. It states your desire to be taken off life support if needed as well as other kinds of treatment you are willing to go through.

Another kind of document used in planning for the future is a health care proxie. This states a specific person that you want to make health care decisions for you if you are unable to do it yourself. In this case the designated person makes the decisions about any kind of treatment recommended and whether or not you should be taken off life support if the situation arises.

When you have a health care proxie in place it is important to discuss your wishes with the person you are allowing to make decisions for you. Putting your wishes in writing is called a medical directive and is included in the health care proxy. You should also make sure that the person you decide on is someone that you trust to make the right decisions for you. Your life is basically in their hands, and they need to be able to handle making what could be a very difficult decision.

Filed Under: General, Healthcare Tagged With: Advance health care directive, Health care, Health care proxy

Know Your Rights as a Nursing Home Resident in Your Area

DENVER - NOVEMBER 09: Nurse Stephen Van Dyke ...

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You’ve recently had to move into a nursing home. What are your rights? And how will knowing you rights help you if needed in the future?

These ideas should help you with any law questions you may have:

You should have received a paper reviewing your rights upon arrival at the nursing home. These rights should be understandable; if they’re not, ask questions. You should also have received a list of rules and regulations regarding the facility.
You must know the fees to be charged before you enter the nursing home and you must be informed of any changes.
You have the right to be treated without discrimination, with respect, and with freedom from abuse and neglect.
You have the right to refuse restraint unless you are harming yourself or someone else. Restraints cannot be used for punishment or to ease the workload of the nursing home staff.
You have the right to take care of your own money and can ask the nursing home facility to help manage your feels or you can take complete care of your money through a bank account.
You have the right to privacy and can keep your personal belongings with you. You can use the telephone privately and are protected from theft.
You have the right to medical care including seeing your personal doctor, refusing medications, accessing your medical records, and more.
You have the right to have visitors for as long as you’d like them.

Any additional rights as a nursing home resident can be found by searching the Internet under “Nursing Home Rights.” Make sure you know your rights as a nursing home resident.

Filed Under: Elder Law, General Tagged With: Health care, Nursing home, Privacy law

The Convenience Of Home Care For Elderly

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The chance that you will have a loved one at home, whether he be elderly or not, with a long term medical condition such as Diabetes is good one. Today people do not spend an extensive amount of time in hospitals and patients are discharged early with home care support.

This is a positive move in health care management for several reasons. The most obvious is that it is a lot cheaper to recuperate in the comfort of your own home. Hospitals are always short of beds and this makes more beds available for those who really need them. Hospitals are rampant with superbugs these days. A super bug is a drug resistant bug that loves to hang around the corridors of hospitals waiting for immune-compromised souls to feast upon. It is in everyone’s best interest to the heck out of hospital as soon as possible.

Home care includes the services of registered nurse practitioners as well as personal support workers and even in some case para medical staff like physio therapists. They will come and change your dressings, give you insulin, help you to bath and dress and generally do everything required to get you well again. All in the comforting environment of your own home.

I had the pleasure last year of home care. I had minor surgery and was surprised when I was told it would be day surgery. To my knowledge this usually required at least three days in hospital. I came around from anesthetic and once the good doctor was convinced I was able to breath reliably on my own, my husband was called to fetch me. The following two days, I had a nurse come by to take out my catheter and change my dressings. The whole experience was quick and simple and I recovered in record time. I personally believe home care is the best thing to avoid complications after surgery.

Filed Under: Elder Law, Guardian, Guardianship Tagged With: Health care, Home care, Home Health, Hospital

Nursing Home Rights

Entering a nursing home can often be a massive sore spot amongst many elderly people. They often feel as if it is a way of signing over their rights, that they are losing a bit of freedom and other issues that might come up with nursing homes.

While the idea of having rights while you are in a nursing home might not sound appealing, it can help. Any person who enters a nursing home is guaranteed a number of rights while they are staying there. These can range from quality of care to how they are treated by staff members.

It is a good idea to review some of the rights a person has when entering a nursing home before you enter one yourself or if a loved one is entering a nursing home.

Here are some of the rights that go along with nursing homes.

You have the right to respect. This means that various staff members and doctors must treat you with respect and dignity that you deserve while you are in a nursing home.

Services and Fees. All fees and services are required to be sent in writing to those that are entering a nursing home. This is to make sure that everything is up front and spelled out for people.

Money. Your money does not have to be managed by the nursing home. You can handle the money or choose someone else, either a friend or family member to handle your financial affairs.

Privacy. You have the right to privacy and personal belongings.

Medical Care. You have the right to be in the know about your medical care, conditions, treatments and what is going on with your medical care. You also have the right to refuse any treatments or medications that you do not want. You also have the right to see your own doctor and not the nursing home provided doctor.

Filed Under: Elder Law, Law Tagged With: Health care, Nursing home

How Fast can we Expect Medicare to Be?

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Working with any kind of government entity is bound to be a slow and methodical process. On its best day, the government is staffed with people who are motivated primarily by avoiding getting yelled at or fired. There ae no performance based incentives in the public sector, so speed and efficiency take a back seat to following every rule without any kind of regard to common sense or the underlying purpose the rule is supposed to serve. With that kind of a back drop, it is no surprise that Medicare makes a lot of people scared and frustrated on a regular basis. Of course, there is something inherently off about the fact that many people consider public health care to be something of an entitled guarantee in life. Since it really isn’t, it may be necessary to take a step back and look at how fortunate the elderly really are.

While the elderly should always have protection under the law equal to anyone else, there is a limit to how much additional protection they should expect. While they are guaranteed Medicare’s financial assistance if they find themselves in need of it, expecting any government entity to work with any sort of expediency is a little bit like expecting a three legged elephant to out sprint a cheetah. The term “snow ball’s chance in Death Valley” does not do justice to the silliness of such an expectation. In a situation which involves Medicare, allowing a month or more for any sort of response is not just being conservative; in many cases, it is being reasonable.

And when you expect Medicare to pay for anything, you need to give them even more time. In most cases, Medicare’s process is anything but smooth. They require all sorts of documentation, and a great deal of attention to detail on the forms they want filled out. While they will ultimately do right by you, the waiting time may end up being quite expansive. There is no sense trying to rush the process. Just as with medical treatments themselves, bureaucrats will take as long as they take.

Filed Under: Elder Law Tagged With: Death Valley, Government, Health, Health care, Health Care Reform, Medicare, Politics, United States

CARIE – Elderly Rights Advocates

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The Center for Advocacy for the Rights and Interests of the Elderly, known as CARIE for short, devotes itself to improving the quality of life for older people. It is a non-profit group that does not provide services to elderly people but instead uses education, action, and advocacy to improve the rights, well being, and autonomy of elderly people. The center is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but can provide assistance to older people all over the country, helping them receive the care, services, and the dignity they deserve.

CARIE provides community education programs, professional training services, individual counseling and problem solving services, and other various activities and resources for the elderly and caretakers of the elderly. CARIE works with policy-makers, health care workers, and the general public, to create improvement in the way elderly people are treated and cared for. The center is there not only to improve the quality of life and the treatment of older people, but wants to help elderly caretakers provide quality care and services to older people.

The center was founded in 1977 as a project of the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia. The U.S. Department of Public Health and Human Services funded the group’s activities until CARIE was incorporated in 1979 as a 501(c)(3) organization. At that time it was financially supported as a VISTA volunteer project. CARIE is responsible for the service mediation approach. This process involves having an agency staff member intervene at crisis points to help elderly caregivers understand and pursue the best options that are available for elderly care, and can also help boost the family’s ability to handle and deal with the issues they are encountering.

CARIE’s success is shown in the multiple awards and acknowledgments received, including two Community Health Impact Awards, an IMPACT award, and the Governor’s Silver and Gold Award for Enhancing the Image of Older Persons. In 2004, CARIE was labeled as “Community Champion” for the elderly with a unanimous vote. The American Society on Aging and the Brookdale Center on Aging honored CARIE with a Best Practices Award for their professional training curriculum.

Filed Under: Elder Law, Law Tagged With: Education, Health, Health care, Old age, People, Senior Health, Seniors, United States

Elder Law History

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Caring and protecting the elderly, especially those that are vulnerable, is the responsibility of all citizens. To help ensure that elderly people do not get taken advantage of, there are several laws and services to protect them and to enforce quality of life. Laws may vary from state to state, but the basic concepts are the same. Elder law is comprised of many different specialties such as income assistance benefits, estate planning, tax laws, planning for long term care and incapacity issues, and trust and estate management. Any issue that affects the aging population falls under the term Elder law.

On July 14, the Older Americans Act of 1965 (OAA) was put into effect. It was the first initiative at the federal level with a goal to provide comprehensive services to senior citizens. Congress created the OAA to address concerns about a lack of community based social services for older adults. The mission of the OAA includes promoting the best possible mental and physical health services, endorse equal opportunity for adequate retirement income, fair long term care, independence, freedom, protection against neglect, abuse, and exploitation, and retirement in honor, dignity, and health. The OAA was able to survive through lack of funding due to the Vietnam War and the dismantling of agencies by future presidents, and it continues to survive today.

The OAA claims to have created the Administration on Aging (AOA), which is a section of the Department of Health and Human Services. The OAA was amended in 1972 to add the elderly national nutrition program. It was amended again in 2000 to include the National Family Caregiver Support Program to help thousands of families who are trying to care for aging loved ones that have disabilities or are ill. Grant funding is provided by the OAA to state and local agencies to help with support groups, counseling, and other community services. In addition to providing help for older family members, elderly people can now receive help from OAA in taking care of relatives that are children aged 18 and under.

Filed Under: Elder Law, Law Tagged With: Elder Law, Health care, Law, Long-term care, Nursing home, Old age, United States, Vietnam War

Some Reasons why you Need a Living Will

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Everybody knows that your will is the best thing going for after you die. But unfortunately, sometimes an illness or injury will not kill you. Not unfortunately in the case of “you really should just die,” but unfortunately in the case of “continuing to live can make things awfully complicated.” We all know that in death, every one of a person’s responsibilities ends. Your last breath is your last chance to get anything done, save for what is written in your will. But what would happen if you were in a coma for six months… and then woke right up, and decided to move on with your life? Not enough people actually plan for such a potentially positive situation. And because of this lack of planning, the situation often turns somewhat disastrous for the recovered patient. All of the little things in life can gang up against you, and make your recovery all the worse.

When you are sick or injured, life is already pretty hectic. You most likely have physical pains, accompanied by all sorts of bills that have a lot of zeroes on the ends of them. If you had put a living portion into your will, then your trustee would have been dealing with all of that while you were unavailable. But if you did not have such a portion in your will, everything just stacks up until “someone” takes care of it. In many cases, your family may not even be legally allowed to deal with some of the issues of your life.

But consider that the home you live in could become an unbelievable source of stress. What happens if the lawn is not mowed for a couple of months, and the city assesses you a fine? What happens if you own your house outright, and the city does not receive its property taxes from you because you were unable to pay them? These are more than just hypothetical situations; they are among the two chief reasons why people who awaken from comas often find out that they are recently homeless for admittedly ridiculous reasons.

Filed Under: Elder Law, Law Tagged With: Coma, Death, End-of-Life, Health, Health care, Homelessness, People, Right to Die

Elder Law and the Need for Debt Consolidation

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It’s not always easy to be in the latter stages of your life. You are faced with the idea that your kids have grown up and no longer need your constant guidance and often find it more challenging to make time for you. Your spouse may have passed on or you have been divorced for a while. You are on a fixed income and finding out slowly but surely there are a lot of challenges in your way. But thankfully there is the American government to protect you.

Thanks to the elder laws that are in place now, the older Americans have the protection they need. It all began as the Older Americans Act which was signed into the law by president Lyndon Johnson in 1965. This does not include just one law. It includes an umbrella effect of laws such as estate planning and wills. This means that older Americans have the right to decide what they want to do when they are on life support and how they want their estate to be handled once they pass on. This gave them the power to not feel like they are without control once they pass on.

Elder law also covers Medicaid and disability coverage. As seniors get older they needed some help taking care of themselves, especially with the rising cost of health care even in the 1960’s and there wasn’t the presence of services like debt consolidation then. The elder law stepped in and made the elderly eligible for health care benefits, covering doctors and hospital visits. It has since been expanded to cover diabetes testing supplies.

These laws were in place for elderly people who didn’t have family to help take care of them and were getting to an age where it was difficult to take care of themselves. Elder laws helped make life for seniors a little more manageable.

Filed Under: Elder Law, General Tagged With: Elder Law, Health care, Lawyers and Law Firms, Older Americans Act