Moynihan Law Firm Blog

INTRODUCTION TO LIFE-CARE PLANNING

Everyone’s ideal situation for their own long-term health care is “aging in place”.  This is where an individual is able to live at home independently with no assistance until he just drops dead.  Many think it would be nice to leave this world that way but, unfortunately, that is not how it usually works.  Instead, the person may experience a deterioration of health that makes it difficult to stay completely independent.  Conditions like Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease or stroke can change the situation very quickly.

You can exercise some control over your own situation.  Life Care Planning, properly implemented, can be thought of as “pre-crisis planning”.  With “pre-crisis planning”, we have more strategies at our disposal to put in place to deal with a crisis that may occur later.

Some of the issues we consider in a Life Care Plan are: health care and long-term decisions making, long-term care options, residential options, public benefits and resources that can help finance care, ownership of a home and personal property, family issues and, most importantly, quality of life and care.

A major part of the plan is legal planning.  It is critical that certain documents be in place ahead of time to permit further action later should it be needed.  For example, a properly drafted durable power of attorney will allow the person of your choice to step in and take action to handle your affairs should you become ill and incapacitated.

A lack of planning often means that the probate court must be called upon to appoint a “conservator” to make health care decisions and to take control over the income and assets of an incapacitated person. I

f you have done no planning in this area, you should promptly formulate a plan that takes into consideration what phase you are in now and what phases may come in the future.

If you have been wise enough to do some planning like purchasing long-term care insurance, perhaps you should do some long-term health care reform and look at what other areas and issues you need to consider in a comprehensive plan for your care.  The key is to take matters into your own hands and not wait for somebody or something to come to your rescue.

LONG-TERM SCARE

Lately, the news has been dominated by discussions about health care reform.  For many people, however, the urgent issue is long-term health care.  “What will happen if I end up in a nursing home?  How will I pay for it?  What kind of care will I receive there?  Will it be possible for me to be cared for at home?” When a family member becomes ill, these can be overwhelming issues to face.  We should think about our own individual long-term health care plan.  There are steps that can be taken before a long-term health crisis hits that will make the problem easier to deal with and easier to afford.  The key is addressing it before the crisis hits.  We call it a Life Care Plan because we try to factor in all phases along the elder care continuum.

The Elder Care Continuum

Picture a timeline where the beginning is a person living healthfully at home and end of the timeline is death.  In between, there are different phases, such as needing help with activities of daily living at home, possibly residing in an assisted-living facility and, eventually, moving to a nursing home.  The idea of a life care plan is to stay at the more desirable end of the continuum for as long as possible.  In each individual case, we do not know how the situation will play itself out, but we can put a plan in place to deal with the various phases one may encounter.