More young people are winding up in nursing homes

[Liberal_in_LA]

Source: msnbc

Adam Martin doesn't fit in here. No one else in this nursing home wears Air Jordans. No one else has stacks of music videos by 2Pac and Jay-Z. No one else is just 26. It's no longer unusual to find a nursing home resident who is decades younger than his neighbor: About one in seven people now living in such facilities in the U.S. is under 65. But the growing phenomenon presents a host of challenges for nursing homes, while patients like Martin face staggering isolation.

"It's just a depressing place to live," Martin says. "I'm stuck here. You don't have no privacy at all. People die around you all the time. It starts to really get depressing because all you're seeing is negative, negative, negative."

The number of under-65 nursing home residents has risen about 22 percent in the past eight years to about 203,000, according to an analysis of statistics from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That number has climbed as mental health facilities close and medical advances keep people alive after they've suffered traumatic injuries. Still, the overall percentage of nursing home residents 30 and younger is less than 1 percent.

Martin was left a quadriplegic when he was accidentally shot in the neck last year by his stepbrother. He spent weeks hospitalized before being released to a different nursing home and eventually ended up in his current residence, the Sarasota Health and Rehabilitation Center. There are other residents who are well short of retirement age, but he is the youngest.

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"For them it's a life sentence. When you're 40 years old you know you're never getting out. This is the way your life will be forever and ever. Amen," says Diane Persson, a gerontologist who has written about the boom in younger nursing home residents.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40967599/ns/health-health_care/

[hlthe2b]

1. If the RETHUGS like Jan Brewer have their way...

he'll be on the street or not "allowed" to survive the injury to begin with.


Sad, very sad situation. I read these things and think there should be a ready solution. If I were in Europe or any of those 'horrible socialist' countries, I'm sure there would be one. sigh....

[lonestarnot]

2. She'll be puttin' people outside for some sunshine come 120.

[Quantess]

7. And it will be spun as "freedom".

[RKP5637]

11. We create problems in the US. Other countries create solutions. n/t

[patrice]

3. If ChurchCo wanted to do something besides make guaranteed jobs out of this situation, they'd

BE THERE as volunteers for America's long-term care residents.

[mudplanet]

19. Not to defend religion, but there are a lot of people who spend a lot

of time and energy visiting and helping residents at care facilities, and probably most of them are active church/temple/mosque attenders.

They're the ones who "walk the talk."

[TheMadMonk]

20. Religions don't. The religious do.

Contrawise, religions are very good at taking credit for the actions of their adherents, whilst discouraging/forbidding those adherents from claiming any for themselves.

Unfortunately, because the religious are all too often totally influenced by their religions, even the great good done by them, can be seriously overshaddowed by the doctrinal baggage they bring with them.

[patrice]

25. Some religion DOES need defending against ChurchCo, so thanks very much for the info! . . .

The money changers are not in ALL of the temples and that's a good thing.

[Skittles]

4. these are the kind of stories I read, and I think about it later

like, next time I get stuck on the tollway crawling like a snail and I'm getting a case of the vapors thinking of how long it will take me to get home, I will think of Mr. Martin :(

[pa28]

5. I'm in this particular business and I think it's true.

My business provides service to Medicare and Medicaid recipients and I've noticed similar demographic changes showing up in the last three years.

I don't know for sure what the mechanics are but I'm guessing insurance companies are streamlining their profits by finding reasons to cancel policies and dump their more expensive cases onto public rolls.

[RobinA]

8. Another Problem

is the lack of any other facility that can care for people with these problems. Increasingly, people with acute problems can get care, but you just damn well better get well and leave, because bean counters look at the discharge rates. Obviously, the old folks home isn't going to have to show a quick turnover, so people who aren't going to turn over end up there so as not to screw up anybody's numbers. I had a client once, a kid, with a traumatic brain injury. He was extremely impulsive and would start fights or run out onto the highway. When the police would try to pick him up and bring him back he had a bad habit of picking up the nearest weapon. He was dangerous to other people and to himself. No one in the state of PA would take him because he was chronic. If they did take him he would end up discharged, ready or not, because they had to show discharge rates. He wasn't going to end up in the old folks home as long as he was beating people up, but had he been less violent he probably would have eventually.

[pa28]

12. Well obviously you've spent some time in the business.

Under our current system I think it's becoming a game of "hot potato" and in the end private insurers pass the liability on. The public ends up paying for expensive end of life care while insurance companies pocket the profits from healthy, younger premium payers.

[Historic NY]

6. Its a shame, there is a whole world for them but they have to no way to get out...

I had a friend that was a quad, he went back to college, got his masters,taught school and sang opera...he went west to California when care was very progressive there. He started Independant living Centers here in NY and another friend a paraplegic runs it today.

[madmax]

10. Your friend is very courageous.

Taking it further he is courage personified. What a guy.

[Historic NY]

13. Unfortunately he passed on in his early 50's he even got married it was as full a life as possible..

It was friends & family that got him going again. The paraplegic I am friend with his brother is still going he has a family and took up the cause.

[madmax]

26. Sorry to hear that -

I have a certain appreciation for those in that situation.

My son had a Moped accident at 15 and lost a leg. Doesn't compare to becoming a para or a quad but, he was lucky. I always think of what 'could have been' and we're both grateful it was only a leg. Some people might think 'only' but, no matter what one has to face it can always be worse.

[wickerwoman]

16. Yeah, I was going to say...

there must be other living alternatives out there. But maybe it depends on what part of the country he's in.

Around the corner from my old place in Seattle there was a small residential care center... it was a regular house with eight bedrooms that focused on enabling independence. Not sure what level of care he needs, but it seems like smaller, more family-like places are the wave of the future.

Maybe he can work with the system to come up with a better arrangement for younger people.

[Nikia]

23. I know of a few quadrapalegics living successful lives

While I was in college, there was a quadrapalegic student who moved his chair with buttons on a bar by his mouth. A friend of my husband's family is married to a man with this disability who is a computer programmer. A woman from my hometown swam on the high school swim team and eventually graduated from Harvard, as well as swimming in the Paraolympics. While everyone has different abilities and motivation, there is no reason that a quadrapalegic without mental disabilities and otherwise in decent health should be confined to a nursing home.

[Historic NY]

27. Thats the way my friend was.....a company in Ca. made him a van to drive too...

its was way too advance for NYDMV when we got it here. Bill along with 3 of us drove it cross country, it took us 8-days but he did it. A major accomplishment for a person in his condition. I never said I couldn't do anything after that. He was an amazing individual.

[sharesunited]

9. There's your 2nd Amendment in action.

[boppers]

14. The 2nd has been around a long, long, time.

It's not like it's new, so what's changed?

[sharesunited]

15. Total quantity of guns and ammo has reached critical mass.

[boppers]

17. You might have a point there, either "critical mass" or "tipping point".

The messy confounding variables, of course, are nations with equal gun ownership and less violence.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

24. Violence is at record lows.

According to statistics we are at levels of violence on par with the 60's, nowhere near the level recorded in the 80's and early 90's.

[sharesunited]

28. Attempted or successful killing of a legislator. Public police and private security respond.

Here is where your 2nd Amendment bids adieu to the American People.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

29. I didn't say anything for or against the 2nd amendment

I was just commenting on the idea that overall violence has increased. I do think mass shootings have probably increased although I don't have statistics.

[tpsbmam]

22. I loathe guns. I've been anti-gun as long as I can remember. But chalking this up to

guns isn't accurate. I worked in hospitals for a long time. I worked on physical medicine & rehab (where you go for, e.g., stroke rehab, brain injury, spinal cord injury, etc etc) but did consultations all over the hospital -- the majority ended up being in neurology. I worked on these services in 3 states, all in cities. In fairness, only one was in a large city with a high crime rate. Another was a state with a high alcohol abuse rate.

By far the greatest numbers of serious injuries were due to things other than gun violence. Yes, there were gun injuries, some of which were self-inflicted. But there were also a slew of other injuries: severe head injuries & spinal cord injuries due to vehicle accidents (I'd say more than half caused by driving while impaired) and causes other than gun violence, drug overdoses that resulted in severe impairment, alcohol abuse resulting in amazing levels of impairments in people quite young (I saw quite a few whose cognitive & functional levels were qualitatively somewhat different but functionally equivalent to a person with moderate Alzheimer's), and on and on. There are MANY other causes besides gun violence.

Certainly an incredibly rare cause but I'll never forget when I was younger seeing a young man in my grandfather's nursing home. He wasn't even able to sit -- he'd be wheeled out to common areas lying prone. He was, for all purposes, "locked in." He had been hit by lightening and was severely impaired as a result. My heart broke for him.

[Odin2005]

18. Here in Minnesota such people have a right to in-home care.

I was shocked when I learned the same is no true elsewhere.

[eilen]

21. As states are decreasing their medicaid benefits

In home care is one of the things being cut. The problem with in-home care is finding the 24 hour staff. The pool of HHAs is not static, most only get 2 -3 hours of HHA service in the am --lucky to get pm HHA. If the HHA does not show up-- it is hard to find another. It is not an easy job and does not pay well, often with no benefits as they are assigned a case or two-- not full time so many go on to do something else if they can.

If the disabled person is not on a bus line, they may not ever get an HHA consistently.