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High Tech Elder Care May Be Mixed Blessing
Hugh Pickens writes "Gerontologists say 'aging in place' vastly improves the quality of life for seniors, and is a lot cheaper for society than group homes and institutions. The trick is to do so without jeopardizing the health and safety of older people, which is why 480 people are taking part in pilot programs in Portland, Oregon that outfit homes with technology so elderly people can be monitored for illness or infirmity. With the first wave of baby boomers turning 65 this year, corporations such as Intel see lucrative new business opportunities tending to a generation of people accustomed to doing things their own way. As part of a test, Dorothy Rutherford's two-bedroom condominium has been outfitted with an array of electronic monitoring gear that might eventually find its way to retail shelves. Motion sensors along hallways and ceilings record her gait and walking speed. A monitor on her back door observes when she leaves the house, and another one on the refrigerator keeps tabs on how often she's eating. A special bed laced with sensors can assess breathing patterns, heart rate and general sleep quality, a pill box fitted with electronic switches records when medication is taken, and a Wii video game system has been rejiggered so that players stand on a platform that measures their weight and balance. But there is the downside, as some experts on the aging population worry that making it easier for elderly people to stay in their homes could reduce the incentive for children to visit or could create a false sense that technology can foresee every problem and address every need."
My mother has been diabetic for thirty plus years. Currently she uses a pump which has a sensor system which can partially measure her glucose level. It is not terribly accurate and has to be calibrated a lot. She is still required to test her blood sugar levels a few times a day as she is NOT allowed to rely on the sensor readings for accuracy. If she gets very low at night it beeps then eventually vibrates. So it can at least determine relative levels of glucose and report the direction its going but they are not convenient. The sensor has to be changed every three days (they are not cheap) and there is a decent failure rate.
So what am I getting at. I like the direction this is going and I do not believe it will make a nation of shut ins or have families feel as if they can ignore their elders. If they are going to ignore their elders (parents) then they will regardless of what technology does. If anything this might help keep them in contact more often because like the article states you can be told if mom took her medicine, if she is eating regularly. I would not mind a monitoring system which could alert on emergencies because that is the real point of all this monitoring - we cannot be there 24x7 but machines can.
I would certainly be willing to pay for monitoring of my parents health so that emergency persons can be sent when the need arises. Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is not something you can recover from unless you catch it quickly. My mother can stay conscious with blood sugar levels in the 40s but when it gets below 60 she acts "silly drunk" and may not realize the trouble she is in. At the same time 500+ in her can be fine but it should be noted because in diabetes one common thing I have found is far too many doctors don't agree on causes or when something is a problem, let alone how to always fix it.
More monitoring options will add more years of good living. Now this opens up the next problem, paying for all these years. For some of us giving up the little things won't be hard for the big things in life.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
they'll enjoy a better quality of life
Oddly enough I only see physical health gadgets. No gadgets for mental health at all. You'd think they could have made even a simple token gesture attempt. Perhaps the stereotypical video conferencing solution, or digital picture frames of the grand kids, or something, something at all.
they won't be stuck with crippling medical bills.
These corporations are not doing work out of the goodness of their heart, in the style of from each according to their ability and to each according to their need. The whole point of this technological exercise is a DIFFERENT group will be delivering the crippling medical bills, instead of the current group. Is this group any better? Eh, probably, more or less. The good news they aren't getting the negative personal interactions and experiences of a nursing home for awhile longer. The bad news is their only personal interaction now seems to be a Wii-based bathroom scale.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Now, you're on to something.
The irritating part of all this, the main goals is to reduce costs, not improve lives or reduce the need for qualified personnel.
I agree and disagree: we have to reduce costs. We have to ask ourselves if keeping grandpa alive for another week (unconscious or in sever pain or zonked out of his gourd ) is really benefiting him. We need to get away from the idea that any extension of life at all cost is worth it. We live and we die - we as a society need to accept that.
As far as reducing costs - how about the medical suppliers lesson their margins? They use the excuse that government regulations and litigation makes them charge so much, but it's an exaggeration. They pass the cost of all that and a few hundred percent markup - I've been there, I've seen it.
If you follow the money of the folks who lobby against any Government health care you always end up with the insurance, drug and medical supply companies. Isn't that interesting?
The way to deal with all this is to have medical costs much more transparent. For any medical treatment, procedure or anything, just try to get a price. You can't. Medical prices are so obfuscated, people just don't have any idea what things really cost and therefore, they have this cost is no object mentality.
I for one do NOT want to burden my family with a long drawn out illness - financially or emotionally.
And also it isn't like the families don't try to do what they can, it simply gets overwhelming and you end up with no choice. I'm probably gonna have to send my mom to a home next week. I hate to do it, I really do, but she has fallen six times in 4 weeks, the last one cracked her head and the first one broke 6 ribs. You simply can't stay up 24/7 to watch them like a hawk and when it is just me and the two boys and the oldest is in college? As I said nobody can stay awake forever.
The biggest bitch is all the docs can tell me is what it isn't. It isn't her heart, her liver is working, etc. gee thanks, that really helps. It still doesn't explain why a 68 year old woman was perfectly fine, doing her own shopping, cooking her own meals, etc and then within 24 hours is having "spells" where she just rambles like a mad woman and when she walks sometimes it is like cutting the strings on a puppet. I mean no warning, no her legs are getting weak and giving out, I mean it literally looks like a ragdoll puppet that the strings were cut, she doesn't even make a sound or try to catch herself, she just takes a header.
Of course when she is having a spell you can't tell her she shouldn't try walking alone, that just makes her angry and along with the sudden personality switches and mood swings freaks the hell out of the boys especially after losing their mom to cancer in 07. Finally trying to deal with her affairs and keep the family home, that my oldest will end up dropping out of med school to try to keep because he'll be damned if he loses the home his grandpa built and the place where his mom grew up, while my GF is having to live 250 miles away because of HER elderly relative (her dad) having a heart attack so he can't be left alone, the stress is frankly driving me into an early grave. The lack of sleep and constantly trying to make ever more money while spending as much time with her as possible (because shit for the elderly sure as fuck ain't cheap) has got me eating aspirin by the handful to deal with the chest pains which is nothing but stress I'm sure. hell I cracked a tooth a few weeks back dragging a case down from a shelf and I can't even get the damned painful bitch fixed as I'm spending money like shit through a goose trying to keep her place and mine too.
So it isn't like most of us just want to dump our family on the state, we just end up without any choice in the matter. As I said docs don't have a fricking clue, we can't afford live in help so that we can actually sleep, and even as we speak she is in the hospital from her last fall so we can't just leave her be for a few hours because she will end up trying to go to the bathroom by herself and splitting her head open. So all I can do is hope the local nursing home doesn't suck, because with more than 25k owed on her house and trying to deal with everything else I just can't do anymore. A man can only stay awake for so long, ya know?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Most of the elderly have a problem with their kids not visiting them nearly enough, and their mental health suffering greatly from loneliness as a result. I would know, I worked in elder care on a summer job and being the only guy I actually didn't have to wash/take care of person hygiene of anyone in spite of that being one of the main tasks.
Know why? Because I was the only young guy who applied and got the job, and my main job consisted of just going to old men's places and talking to them or doing some heavy lifting for them. Frankly, I think that's also what put a lot of thing in perspective for me back then - I was a young kid, and seeing just how lonely these people were on a personal level taught me to really appreciate my own life. Because when it was pretty damn obvious that for those months I worked there, the person's high point of the day was my 15-minute visit to deliver him the newspaper and food, and chat him up to see how things are makes you really appreciate how good your own life is even in the angsty late teen period.
Sometimes I think that maybe a mandatory service for all youth a la conscription to work at a elderly care for a few months or a year would be a good thing, and not just for the system.