by Attorney Joseph L. Matthews

The benefits of home health care are great, but it's not always practical.

In recent years, more and more elders are turning to home care to meet their personal and health care needs. This trend is particularly welcome in light of public health surveys indicating that up to half of all nursing facility residents could live independently if they had adequate and affordable home care services. And other studies have shown that the longer people remain independent from institutional care, the better their overall physical and emotional health.

Home care may be adequate and affordable for an elder who needs help with some physical movements around the home -- bathing and getting meals, for example -- or with exercise, physical therapy, or monitoring a chronic health condition.

Unfortunately, though, long-term home care is not always a practical solution. If the elder needs extensive medical treatment or close monitoring for many hours each day, the difficulty of arranging different types of care may make home care impractical -- and the cost may become prohibitive. In most cases, long-term home care also requires family members to fill in gaps that the outside care services do not cover. For many people without such family assistance, long-term home care is simply not an option.