Perceptive Calibrations Of Senior Care

Families are frequently called on to compare at home supportive care with residential assisted living.   Two models of care that seem to serve a similar population in a slightly different way.  Home supportive care sends a trained staff person to the seniors home to provide needed cares.  Residential assisted living moves the senior in to their own apartment with connecting halls and available staff to provide needed cares. 

It is helpful to use a managed care approach to establishing an agreed upon unit for comparison.  A gradation of hands on help fiscally calibrates staff utilization.  Our unit is one hour of hands on help in which staff would perform dressing, toileting, grooming, oral care, medication retreival, transfer, meals, bathing.  One staff person would only be able to help one individual at a time with these activities of daily living.  So our common accepted standard is one hour of care for one staff person to perform hands on cares for one individual who needs the help.

In our example the residential assisted living facility employs two trained staff persons per 16 residents.  This would mean 1 staff person is available to serve 8 residents. 

Each day has 24 hours in it.  Dividing the 24 hours by the 8 residents waiting to receive help from the one staff person we calculate 3 hours.  So, each resident can expect to receive 3 hours of hands on care per 24 hours, or one day.  Like a chemical equation this captures all that would be available to use.

The family pays the residential assisted living facility 3900.00 per month for the seniors stay.  There are 30 days in this month for our example.  Dividing the 3900.00 by the 30 calculates to 130.00 per day.  For 130.00 per day the senior receives about 3 hours of hands on care.  We can devide the 130.00 by the 3 hours to calculate a 43.00 cost per hour of hands on care. 

In this example using our agreed upon unit of comparison one hour of hands on care will cost about 43.00 per hour.

In this example our at home supportive care service (www.homecarepath.com) would charge 20.00 for an hour of our agreed upon unit which is hands on care.   One staff person would come to the seniors home and help with transfers, meals, bathing, grooming, oral care, haircare, medication reminders, and dressing. 

We can now express a cost comparison using our agreed upon unit as it takes place within the listed care  delivery models.  In the residential assisted living for 130.00 per day staff perform 3 hours of hands on care for the cost of 43.00 per hour. 

In the at home supportive care service for 130.00 per day staff perform 6.5 hours of hands on care for a cost of 20.00 per hour. 

If the senior seems to need more time , which model will provide more time for a similar investment?

Home Care Path is a leading senior care provider serving south central Wisconsin.  Services include:
-in home staffing with help for ADL's and IADL's
-inpatient advocacy for safe successful hospital stays
-crisis intervention with transitional counseling
-temporary help with a scheduled day surgery
-down sizing home contents when stuff matters
-packing and shipping with gift giving season
-communicate face to face on the computer across long distances
Simply call 608-432-4286 to schedule an in home interview.  2012 rates are 20.00 per hour.  Email lkutzke@homecarepath.onmicrosoft.com  We accept long term care insurance.  We can be there when you are working.  Services are tax deductible.  Valuing home and human life.