What long-term care options are available?

What long-term care options are available?

Karl Steinberg (Associate Medical Director, Sharp Mission Park Medical Group) gives expert video advice on: Who provides long-term care?; What long-term care options are available?; What is a long-term care facility? and more...

As far as what options are available for long-term care, there are quite a few different kinds and they have a lot of different names. The first is just a private home setting, and have some assistance in-home, either part-time or full-time, from either family or paid care-givers of various types. There's an independent living setting for seniors that typically has very little assistance that's provided. There might be a common area, a dining area, and things like that, and assistance with laundry, things of that nature, but pretty low-level needs. You can move into an assisted-living setting, where there's a range of different services that can be required and that can be provided. From that setting, you can move on into a nursing facility type setting where there is high level custodial assistance, and where they can deal with things like incontinence, or maybe wandering, or things like that. There are also specific communities for dementia patients, and there's the skilled nursing facilities, where a whole variety of medical services can also be provided.