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Phone :866 606 8495
Phone :951 302 8647
FAX :951 302 2389
e-mail: heartwood@heartwoodhealth.com
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Heartwood Health Case Studies
"Advocacy for Mild Dementia"
An 89 Year Old With No Local Family Gets Help
Our Private Health Care Advocate Division was contacted in November about Irene, an 89 year old woman who had been in a nursing home for about 1-1/5 years. Previously she lived alone, and had no local family.
One day she was found unconscious on her kitchen floor by a neighbor. She was admitted to the hospital for 5 days and then discharged to the nursing home where she remained for the next 18 months. Irene has no family in the area, and the staff had neither incentive nor ability to assist her in returning to her home.
Suffering from very mild dementia and congestive heart failure - both common diagnoses in the elderly population. Irene was never declared incompetent, although the nursing home staff and her attorney attempted to do so on several occasions. Irene paid her bills, remembered what happened during the day, and the week before. In fact, her mini mental exam ( link) showed her to be competent to make decisions about her life, including end-of-life decisions.
As the nursing home continued to drain her life savings at a rate of $6,000 per month, she began to worry about how she could pay for staying there. She responded to a letter that offered a reverse mortgage, which would allow her to return home, with in home care and live out her days there. The nursing home, fearing that reverse mortgages were a scam, put up several road blocks. It was suggested that Irene needed a Private Health Advocate to assess her situation, and to determine the feasibility of her return home. Services that Heartwood Health provided:
- Arranged for an MD to come to the SNF to perform a Mini Mental Exam, to determine competency.
- Evaluation of the home environment for safety.
- Arrange for the safety work to be done in the home before she returned home. i.e. grab bars, smoke alarms, etc.
- Identified non-profit organization that offers these safety services free of charge.
- Identify an attorney specializing in elder issues to work with Irene to write her will and initiate Advanced Medical Directives.
- Interviewed and suggested an in home provider who could provide 24/7 Care and medication management, including interaction report.
- Initiate and monitor in-home Physical Therapy/OT upon return home.
- Oversee in-home care provider, including instructions from MD, regarding BP monitoring, weight changes.
Without the oversight of a Private Health Advocate Irene would not have been able to return home. Every day she expresses her gratefulness of living in her home.