Continuing Care at Home. AgePros, what do you think?

Consider this. In a recent AARP poll, 75% of older Americans expressed a strong preference for aging in place, which often involves continuing care at home. It’s no wonder that so many are experimenting with a variety of solutions–some more affordable than others.

As you explore options with your cliients one question often remains. What happens when a client needs more care than they can recieve at home? And will it be affordable? We recently learned about a growing (yet still modest) trend— something called Continuing Care at Home. And we’d like your thoughts.

Continuing Care at Home is designed to help people age in place. Then if they do eventually enter a continuing care community, they can do so at reasonable fee.

The option has been offered for several decades. While it remains a small percentage of the continuing care community business, it is growing.

Continuing Care at Home. What your client gets. What it costs.

Continuing Care at Home programs typically provide services like these with the goal of helping older adults age in place:

• regular health check-ins
• coaching from a life care manager (geriatric care specialist)

The cost? A monthly management fee strating in the $500 range.

In addition, a one-time upfront, fee below $100,000, guarantees a place in a long-term care community should the need or desire arise. That under $100K fee is significantly less than the many hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more, associated with continuing care community entrance fees.

So far, so good. In essence, Continuing Care at Home functions as a considerably less expensive form of long-term care insurance — except none of the fees mentioned so far cover the cost of any in-home care; the very services designed to help you remain in your home.

For example, let’s say your client falls and needs a home health aide for a few months. Their care manager does the work of finding and arranging for home health aide.  Perhaps rehab is also part of the recovery plan.

Your client pays for both. And as we all know, in-home health care is very expensive. So, too, are things like renovations to make a home more appropriate for aging in place, as well as the costs associated with owning a home, from taxes to insurance to maintenance.

So, yes. Continuing Care at Home seems like good option for locking in the cost of living in a community care facility at some future point.

Is it the best way to manage aging in place between now and then?

We’d love to hear your thoughts, and we know the AgePros community would, too. Just leave a comment below.
For more info on aging in place check out our blog on creative solutions, whether its right for everyone and more.