Senior healthcare is a highly important thing to prepare for. Elders who are about to seek assisted living differ depending on their needs and lifestyle. Some need full-on healthcare assistance, and others only need someone to help them in their daily life. A senior who wants to stay in the comfort of their own home and doesn’t need much hospital equipment can hire an in-home healthcare service. If they prefer to have daily social interactions with others, they can move to a nursing home, which is better for their mental health.
The Advancing Technology in Senior Care
While technology is taking over healthcare, elders nowadays are getting confused about how their records are being stored in a cloud since 86 percent of office-based physicians use EHRs (electronic health records). Sure, they may know how to use their smartphone, tablet, and the internet. But technology in healthcare is something a little difficult to catch up with, especially if they’ve made handwritten notes for a while.
Approximately 85 percent of the elderly have at least one chronic illness, and 60 percent have at least two. Only you can imagine how that kind of life is for them. Most certainly, they’re in need of multiple healthcare providers and specialists. Not to mention the equipment used for their tests and monitoring.
This is where senior care is actually evolving. They build the IT infrastructure wherein it can help seniors and the future elderly generation. Furthermore, the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) is developing new goals for interoperability—in which computer systems or software are used for exchanging and making use of information—for the upcoming decade. Thus, senior care should be in line with this.
The Future of Senior Care
Considering the senior population, or the overall U.S. population is one of the primary issues in senior care. It is getting tougher year by year and generation by generation. By the 2030s, people older than 65 years old will make up 21 percent of the population. By 2060, approximately one in four Americans are expected to be 65 years old and older.
With this growing senior population in the country, the government is willing to spend more money on healthcare programs for them, considering they spend about 26,000 dollars on an elder per year.
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Value-based Care
With the goal being to lessen the hospitalization of the elderly while keeping them healthy, one advancement in senior care is more care providers are going to switch away from fee-for-service care. Rather than focusing on the volume of services they provide, they are taking on the quality of the outcomes of given services at a population level.
Such a plan will provide services that are preferable and affordable for both the payor and the provider. This will encourage care providers to willingly deliver every necessary care, especially to those with more complex needs. ONC can make these plans doable by supporting better data integration on value-based care.
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More Options for Healthcare Plans and Services
Senior have more choices when it comes to their healthcare coverage. By increasing the use of interoperability, ONC can grant seniors continuous access to high-quality healthcare plans. For many of them, switching healthcare plans is tiring and overwhelming since it is, for a fact, a lot of work. Some have a fear of leaving out crucial medical history during the transition process. They don’t need this kind of additional stress when they’re already carrying such health burdens.
Getting rid of this problem for our elderly will genuinely help make their healthcare more accessible and portable. Providing freedom and flexibility to find the plan that works best for them. Improving data storage and sharing of health plan transition will avoid misplaced documents and misfortunes for the payor.
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Advanced Patient Monitoring
Digital health tools, remote patient monitoring, and telehealth are put into good use in healthcare, providing assurance and safety for seniors and people of all ages who need them.
This was unleashed when the pandemic emerged. Since seniors are a priority to safety, professionals have developed data keeping for seniors, seeking new ways to stay healthy even without visiting the hospital or their doctor’s office. In fact, telehealth usage has increased today, being higher than pre-pandemic.
For the future, this needs more attention from ONC. Hence, healthcare providers can better control and monitor the patients’ needs, leading to better and safer healthcare management, especially for seniors.
Despite the seniors being confused and having trouble adjusting to this technology development, they will seem to catch on eventually, just like they did when they first used smartphones, tablets, and the internet. These technologies will have a great advantage to them after all.
