What Is Long-Term Care?

(2 of 7)

What Is Long-Term Care?

For many years, long-term care (LTC) was essentially defined as "nursing home care." But most people have a strong desire to recover from illness or to grow old in their own homes if at all possible. This has created a trend toward medical treatment and LTC provided in the home by family, visiting nurses, or aides.

The development of long-term care services

A variety of other important community-based services have also become available, including home-delivered meals and adult daycare centers. In many cases, the appropriate level of care can now be arranged at home so that a person can remain there much more economically than by going into a nursing home.

Long-term care can be many things, but it is not exclusively medical care. LTC is not intended to make you "better." Rather, it can make your life better. In the situations we are focusing on here, the need for care is simply the result of the aging process and its associated ailments and conditions.

For those who develop a severe mental impairment such as Alzheimer’s disease or senile dementia, the appropriate LTC would involve supervision to protect against threats to their own health and safety. In the case of a chronic physical illness or disability, LTC could mean assistance with the essential functions and activities of everyday life.

The most basic LTC functions

Six of the most basic of these functions have been widely recognized:

• Bathing
• Eating
• Dressing
• Toileting
• Transferring (e.g., in and out of bed)
• Continence

These constitute the activities of daily living (ADL) used by insurance companies to measure the need for long-term care. There are a myriad of other functions that have become practically essential, such as using the telephone, paying bills and managing money, going to the grocery store, etc. Assistance with these kinds of tasks is certainly part of long-term care needs, but it is important to note that the ADLs are of primary importance in insurance matters.