Everything Elderly is on Saturday mornings at 8:30, on 1290 am WLBY, sponsored by Senior Helpers. This past weekend we had interesting discussions about home health care and memory care.

Our first guest was Bryan Kulcsar, an account liaison with Heartland Home Health Care and Hospice. Bryan’s main role is educating the public and other health care professionals about home care and hospice care. He is out in the community visiting hospitals, assisted living and skilled nursing facilities.

Home health care is skilled nursing and skilled therapy. To qualify for Medicare-provided home care you must need skilled services, and you must be home-bound. The qualification is determined by a nurse or physician. To be considered home-bound, leaving your home “needs to be a taxing effort”. Skilled home care generally requires about 30 days.

We also talked about hospice care and how it is frequently misunderstood by the general public. Hospice is for loved ones near the end stage of life, with prognosis of six months or less. It is not just for the last few days of life. Heartland offers pet therapy and music therapy, two non-traditional approaches that can really help comfort a loved one. Hospice is a Medicare benefit available at home, wherever you call home, including facility communities — “the patient defines where they call home”.

Heartland prides itself on keeping their re-hospitalization rates low. They work very hard to keep people home and well taken care of. Their physical therapy and fall prevention education helps achieve good results.

To get in touch with Bryan or Heartland Home Health Care and Hospice, please call 888-427-6772, or go to the website hcr-manorcare.com. If you’d like to listen to the full 12-minute segment click the audio link below:

We then spoke with Ranee Seal, the sales and marketing manager at the Clare Bridge community in Ann Arbor. Clare Bridge is a 36-bed memory care facility that takes care of those with dementia and any memory care need.

Clare Bridge is part of the Brookdale Senior Living organization that has 546 locations nationwide, including independent living, assisted living and memory care. Clare Bridge offers one of Brookdale’s new programs, Innovative Senior Care. This is physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy that is provided in house. The resident can receive therapy at Clare Bridge, with the objective of allowing them to return directly to Clare Bridge after a hospital visit, hopefully avoiding moves between facilities.

Many folks with memory care needs also have behavioral issues, and Clare Bridge can handle these concerns as well. Common behavioral issues include irritableness, a need to be busy, constant touching, anxiety and “sundowners”. Sundowners is a behavior that generally manifests in the evening — anxiety elevates, and it may be difficult to calm the individual.

Ranee helped us better understand Clare Bridge with examples of residents there today, including two brothers who have lived together their whole lives (they even went to war together) and now live together at their community. We talked about how people with dementia and Alzheimer’s can definitely be happy and still have good quality of life. As Ranee said, “there is a reason why they are still with us.” If you would like to contact Ranee Seal or Clare Bridge, please call her directly at 734-945-3820 or at the office at 734-213-1708, or you may go to brookdaleliving.com. To listen to the full 12-minute discussion click the audio link below:

Alan Caldwell is the owner of Senior Helpers, providing in-home care services, primarily to the elderly. He can be contacted at acaldwell@seniorhelpers.com, or at 734-927-3111.