BrightSpring Health Services / August 26, 2024
BrightSpring’s VP of Clinical Services and Innovation, Dr. Shauen Howard, discusses the need for change in the infrastructure of post-acute long-term care facilities in the Caring for the Ages article “Beyond Bridges and Highways: PALTC Gets Infrastructure Blues, Too.”
“While the pandemic spotlighted the need to move away from large communal living situations, Shauen Howard, DHA, MSN, vice president of clinical services and innovation at BrightSpring Health, stressed that residents increasingly want privacy. “No one wants to go to a facility and share a room with a roommate they have nothing in common with and have to walk or get wheeled down to a big cafeteria,” said Dr. Howard. “Even if COVID didn’t happen, why would you not want a community living situation where you have to ability to walk out into a living room with furniture that looks like what you would have in your own home?”
With the growing move toward value-based care, it will be increasingly important for facilities to address social determinants of health and enable community connections that help provide things like transportation, meals, and medication support. Currently, said Dr. Howard, “you have to be part of a [Veterans Affairs] program or have Medicaid to receive in-home services for social determinants of health, and I think that that landscape will have to change. We’ve already seen the Part C or [Medicare Advantage] plans start offering those services post-hospitalization but not long term. This is a start, but it doesn’t go far enough. If you get out of the hospital, you might not be able to independently bathe or go to the grocery store or meet those basic needs for yourself; so I think that is one of the things that will have to be fixed.” She stressed, “There have to be services surrounding social determinants of health to maintain people safely in their homes.”
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