The evidence for the benefits of this type of care has been accumulating for some time now. Prevention in home care has been shown to have returns that are much greater than the cost of providing it. However, the system continues to find reasons to fund the crisis that these home care systems are established to prevent.
The maths of a prevented fall helps to illustrate the point of how the early intervention of a home care worker can help to prevent falls from happening. For example, if the home care worker notices that the individual is moving differently, that they are less confident on the stairs and that the rug in the hallway has become a risk of falling, they can act upon this knowledge to prevent a fall that would result in a hip fracture, hospital admission, rehabilitation period, permanent reduction of independence of the individual and an increase in care needs that would persist for the rest of the individual’s life. The cost of such early intervention is modest compared to the cost of the consequences that it would have prevented. For Home Care Gloucester, visit https://broomfieldcare.com/
The same logic can be applied to every other part of preventative care at home. For example, medication management helps to prevent the admission of patients into a hospital. Nutritional support helps to prevent the deterioration of the health of older patients. Social contact helps to prevent depression and mental decline that is experienced by isolated people.
The evidence for all of these statements has been readily available within various reports, inquiries, and strategies for decades. The system that acts upon it at scale does not yet exist.
Every year, this gap persists.
