egal Issues in Deciding Elderly & Nursing Home Care
By Elissa Bassini, eHow Contributor
September 13, 2010
Elderly and nursing home care is a medical specialty. Elderly patients often suffer from medical conditions that require them to have ready and continual health care assistance in their homes or in facilities that specialize in seniors. There are several important legal issues that health care providers and seniors and their families must consider when deciding on care options. These include the patient's right to make her own health care decisions and to choose her home care provider, the offense of "elder abuse" committed either by caregivers or the elder's own family members, legal rights of nursing home residents, and the financial concerns involved in paying for in-home or nursing home care.
Patients' Right to Make Health Care Decisions
Every competent adult has the legal right to make decisions concerning his own health care. Elderly patients, however, frequently suffer from conditions like dementia that render them unable to make or enforce their own informed decisions. The law recognizes the right of elderly patients to still have their choices respected despite any present incapacity. For example, many states provide the right to make advance health care directives instructing medical providers and families as to chosen methods of care in the event of incapacity. Accordingly, in making decisions concerning an elderly patient's care, providers and family are legally obligated to respect his pertinent directives; these might include his chosen health agency, the types of treatment he would accept or reject, and whether he would want professional home or nursing home care at all.
Once an elderly patient (or someone properly appointed to make decisions on his behalf) decides to get home health care, she has the right to decide which health care service provider to have in her home; it also requires medical professionals to inform the patient both of this right and of the specific available in-home options. However, physicians affiliated with hospitals often ignore this duty to inform; rather, they may refer a patient to their hospital's home care agencies to the exclusion of other options. This practice violates the patient's federal rights. There are, in fact, many competent home care providers from which a patient may choose. The objective is to make the informed decision to which the patient is legally entitled.
Abridged
SOURCE: eHow
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