Caregivers at the Heart of Re-Imagined Long-Term Care Delivery in Canada: Beyond the Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Carol Fancott ◽  
Tanya MacDonald ◽  
Kim Neudorf ◽  
Maggie Keresteci
2021 ◽  
pp. 082585972110393
Author(s):  
Hon Wai Benjamin Cheng

While the whole population is at risk from infection with the coronavirus, older people—often frail and subject to multimorbidity—are at the highest risk for the severe and fatal disease. Despite strict infection control and social distancing measures, frail adults in long-term care facilities may be at particular risk of transmission of respiratory illness. Treatment decisions are often complex attributed to the heterogeneity of this population with regards to different geriatric domains such as functional status, comorbidity, and poly-pharmacy. While measures must be taken to prevent the novel coronavirus from spreading through these facilities, it is also essential that residents with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have access to the symptom management and support they want and deserve. What most nursing home residents want during the course of their illness is to be able to stay in their facilities, to be surrounded by the people they love most, and to feel relief from their physical and emotional pain. By addressing the limited access to hospice and palliative care delivery in nursing homes, we can prevent unnecessary suffering and pain from COVID-19 as well as lay the groundwork for improving care for all residents moving forward.


Healthcare ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Cloutier ◽  
Amy Cox ◽  
Ruth Kampen ◽  
Karen Kobayashi ◽  
Heather Cook ◽  
...  

1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-201
Author(s):  
Ruthanne R. Ramsey

Geriatric teams have emerged as an accepted method of health care delivery to the elderly patient in ambulatory and acute inpatient settings. As one model of specialized health care teams, geriatric teams vary in structure, membership, and type. The purposes may be diverse, ranging from providing primary care to multidimensional functional and diagnostic assessment. Geriatric teams have convincingly demonstrated benefit to the care of the elderly. Overcoming significant barriers to their formation, geriatric teams are beginning to develop in long-term care facilities as a result of economic and educational pressures. However, the unique environment and needs of the long-term care facility have resulted in differences in leadership, membership, and structure of long-term care teams. Pharmacist involvement in the long-term care geriatric team could benefit the facility, patient care, and the profession. The key to future involvement by pharmacists in teams appears to depend on their interest, ability to acquire necessary skills, and demonstration of unique professional contributions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-357
Author(s):  
Jullet A. Davis

Purpose Globally, in 1980, approximately 5.8 per cent of the world population was 65 years old and older. By 2050, this number will more than triple to 16 per cent. From a leadership perspective, there is at least one challenge (among many others challenges) to consider. This paper (viewpoint) aims to provide support for the growing need for academically prepared managers. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a viewpoint which presents several characteristics of the long-term care (LTC) field that support the need for academically trained leaders. Findings LTC leaders in all countries must be sufficiently versed in numerous management areas to provide leadership when called on by those assigned to their care. Given local area variations in population needs present across all countries, it may be unwise to advocate for national, countrywide standardization of requirements. Yet, older adults accessing LTC services should expect a minimum level of knowledge from all of their providers – not just those who provide direct, hands-on care. However, similar to those who provide direct care, leaders should receive competency-based education with specific attention to effective communication skills, team-based approaches to care delivery, information technologies and population health. Originality/value Although much of the extant literature focuses on the delivery of care to older persons, there is a dearth of literature addressing the role of LTC leaders in light of global aging. Establishing a minimum level of academic training and increasing transparency focused on the positive experiences of elders residing in LTC facilities should help dispel the notion that placement in an LTC facility reflects filial failure.


Author(s):  
Jun Li ◽  
Edward C. Norton

Pay-for-performance programs have become a prominent supply-side intervention to improve quality and decrease spending in health care, touching upon long-term care, acute care, and outpatient care. Pay-for-performance directly targets long-term care, with programs in nursing homes and home health. Indirectly, pay-for-performance programs targeting acute care settings affect clinical practice for long-term care providers through incentives for collaboration across settings. As a whole, pay-for-performance programs entail the identification of problems it seeks to solve, measurement of the dimensions it seeks to incentivize, methods to combine and translate performance to incentives, and application of the incentives to reward performance. For the long-term care population, pay-for-performance programs must also heed the unique challenges specific to the sector, such as patients with complex health needs and distinct health trajectories, and be structured to recognize the challenges of incentivizing performance improvement when there are multiple providers and payers involved in the care delivery. Although empirical results indicate modest effectiveness of pay-for-performance in long-term care on improving targeted measures, some research has provided more clarity on the role of pay-for-performance design on the output of the programs, highlighting room for future research. Further, because health care is interconnected, the indirect effects of pay-for-performance programs on long-term care is an underexplored topic. As the scope of pay-for-performance in long-term care expands, both within the United States and internationally, pay-for-performance offers ample opportunities for future research.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document