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Good Work if You Can Keep It
I've been conducting a very personal poll over the past few years. As I've gone to see my own set of doctors (my primary care physician and various other specialists), I've asked what they know about home medical equipment. The unanimous answer, to my dismay, has been not a lot.
While my doctors have certainly been focused on me, they see a patient standing before them within the walls of their offices. Little has been asked about the person who must deal with the business of living beyond those walls. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for the outstanding care we get from physicians in this country. But that care is concentrated within the practice, the clinic, the hospital.
In a rehab group several years ago after a shoulder injury, I discovered that even my physical therapist was largely unaware of the home aids that could help his patients stay safe and comfortable outside of his sessions. After cycling through various physicians in a number of disciplines, I'm afraid the same might be true for many in the medical world.
Speaking last month at a panel sponsored by Invacare, Dr. Steven Landers, a geriatrician and home care specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, confirmed that most of his colleagues have “limited knowledge” of what the home care industry is all about. To change the situation, Landers advocates more physician education about home care in med schools and through clinic and hospital systems. That's a long-term approach, and I hope it will happen. In the meantime, millions of baby boomers will roll into the Medicare system over the next decade, and they don't want to spend their later years anywhere else but in their own homes. In fact, Landers said, most of these folks fear nursing homes more than death. Wow.
So what's with the continuing institutional bias in the nation's health care system? How come Congress and regulators don't get that they should be shoring up our home care infrastructure instead of decimating it? What's so hard to understand about the fact that their homes are where people would rather receive continuing care?
