Older individuals are growing day by day in New York City, ensuring their safety and care. Some services are a must that focus especially on older people. These services are mostly healthcare, personal care services, social engagement, and financial assistance. Many individuals want to avail these services while having full independence at their own homes.
To ensure these elderly citizens have a quality of life, many healthcare agencies are working in New York. They provide professional caregivers who give services in the patient’s home as per their needs. Let’s have a look at the elderly care in NYC and understand what service the seniors need most.
Why is Elderly Care Important?
Old age is a crucial time in life, as physical strength and mental stability diminish at this age. Chronic and deadly diseases commonly attack at this age. These diseases, like high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, dementia, alzheimers, etc require extra care that an elderly patient can’t provide.
Moreover, neglect from younger generations and other family members can make an elder’s life miserable, as it negatively affects their health. All these seniors look to their family or loved ones to take care of them, but not everyone is able to help due to their personal work. So, many old people live alone at home. These people suffer from loneliness, depression, and anxiety.
For all these reasons, older people need extra care that will help them to live a happy and quality life till the end of their lives. There are many home health care services that take care of them and work for these elderly people.
Understanding What Elderly Care Seniors Need
To ensure the best care for the elderly, we should know what our elders need to make their lives easy and convenient. An elderly person requires a lot of help to live their life after a certain age. A lot of elderly people live alone as they have no partner, family, or relatives. Moreover, the people who are disabled due to severe diseases, illness, or accidents need assistance with everyday work.
1.2 million residents aged 65 and over live in New York City. To help with their daily needs, a lot of care homes work for them and customize their care plan according to the needs of elderly people. So many professional caregivers work for these health care agencies to give physical, mental, medical, and non-medical support to all the elderly patients who enroll in this program.
Services Seniors Need The Most
Seniors need special care and services from all sectors. To understand it better, let’s distinguish the services in the following sectors:
Home Health Care
Home health care is an essential program for the aging people in New York. It helps senior people to live their lives independently while taking professional help. Trained and professional caregivers help the seniors with their daily chores, personal hygiene, light housekeeping, mobility, etc. Licensed professionals provide skilled nursing care, therapies, medical social services, home health aides, etc.
Assistance with Activities of Daily Living
Seniors who struggle with their daily needs, such as cooking, bathing, dressing, and mobility, can seek help from professional caregivers of the health care service agency, who will help all these senior citizens with their daily living activities. Seniors can avail this service at their home without any necessity of going to a nursing home.
Mobility and Transportation
A lot of elderly people can’t move on their own or can’t drive anywhere, like to hospitals or grocery shopping. Home Health Care Caregivers will help the elderly individuals with mobility and transportation. Caregivers will help them to go to the bathroom or walk, and drive them to the places they need to go.
Healthcare and Medication
Elderly people’s main concern after their daily living needs should be healthcare. Most elderly people suffer from various health issues. They need routine visits to the doctor and regular healthcare checkups. Elders with chronic health issues such as alzheimers, diabetes need special care and assistance. For them, health care agencies provide skilled nurses and caregivers who can perform basic medical services (CPR, insulin push,etc) and provide timely medication to the elderly ill patients.
Nutrition and Meal Support
Balanced and nutritious meals are important for all seniors, as they can’t look after the nutrition values of their food most of the time. Many of them suffer from malnutrition because they can’t go grocery shopping or cook meals. Some of them might need a medically tailored meal for their disease. For all these reasons, an elder’s nutrition and meal support is very important. To take care of this, home care agencies have meal support in their care programs.
Physical Activity
Physical activity for elderly individuals is very important for their physical and mental health. Some elderly patients need to perform mandatory physical activity due to their medical history and treatment. But most of them can’t do so without any assistance. For assistance, caregivers will help with physical activity.
Relationships and Social Interaction Opportunities
For an elderly individual’s emotional, mental and physical well-being, social relationships are an essential influence. Due to mobility limitations, retirement or loss of a partner or loved one, an elderly person’s social network diminishes which causes loneliness and isolation. It affects the health of the elders, so the healthcare programs add companion care, community engagement that helps the elders to maintain regular interaction.
Money management
As individuals age, vulnerability to financial exploitation increases. To maintain autonomy, access to necessary services, and financial stability, money management is a cornerstone of comprehensive elder care. To help with money management, many care programs offer Daily Money Management (DMM) service that will take several responsibilities such as: paying bills, balancing checkbooks, organizing financial records, preparing budgets, assisting with tax documents, and reviewing medical bills.
Legal Support
Elders have plans for their end-of-life planning, drafting wills, housing disputes, taxation, etc., legal matters to look after. To help them with these legal affairs, home health care offers some legal support, like advance directives, power of attorney, elder abuse protection, and guardianship, etc. to make their life easier.
Conclusion
In New York, where so many older people live, they need specific services to live an independent and peaceful life at that age. After retirement, so many elderly individuals live in loneliness and complete isolation, which makes them depressed and fail to live a quality life.
For all these reasons, seniors need personal care that is tailored specially for the seniors who are older, ill, disabled, or lonely. In home health and personal care, financial support, social engagement programs, etc., are the main services that a senior needs. A lot of home health care agencies in New York and other states in the US are offering all these supports to ensure a quality life for the seniors.
FAQs
What are the most essential healthcare services for elders in New York?
Elderly seniors often require activities of daily living (ADLs) like bathing, grooming, dressing, feeding, light housekeeping services, routine health checkups, chronic disease management, etc. These are the most essential for their daily living to maintain a quality of life in old age.
Can a patient have healthcare services at their own residence in New York?
Yes, in New York City, patients can have health care services in their own residences. These care programs are specially designed for individuals who want to have services at their home and live independently without being admitted to a nursing home.
What financial service programs are essential for elderly individuals?
Financial services are very important for elderly people, as most of them are not able to manage their financial plans due to illness or other reasons. The most essential financial service programs for elders are – housing assistance, healthcare and prescription support, income and financial support, financial management and protection services, etc.
