Aloha!

Welcome to HAH's special Web site location for news about long term care. Long term care is the fastest evolving sector of the health care environment. It is changing rapidly to meet the challenges of affordability, availability, accessibility and most importantly, the marketplace.

The reason that long term care is emerging in prominence has to do with many factors. We are living longer and healthier lives. No longer do people in their fifties and sixties die suddenly of acute illnesses in quite the same way as just a few decades ago. Now we age "gracefully" but with more chronic illnesses.

Because we have such a healthy population there are more of us living longer. And the cost of keeping body and soul together, especially in paradise, has continued to climb. Usually, both parents in the house work and fewer women are available during the day to care for aging parents at home. In addition, our young adults go where the jobs are and often they are forced to leave parents behind with fewer family members to help them.

And of course, we are all aware that as of 2011 some 76 million baby boomers will begin reaching 65 years of age. Most will live well into their eighties and beyond. With age comes infirmities and thus greater demand for services to meet their changing physical dynamic. Boomers have always been a demanding group and we expect this to continue.

The cost of care has risen over the years, as well. The primary payer of long term care is Medicaid...a program for the poor. As it stands now, we force our elderly to go on welfare to receive long term care. The combined perceptions of high cost of care or the prospect of poverty do not sit well with the potential buyers of this product. Thus the marketplace will drive many changes in the coming years.

Many definitions of long term care exist. Put very simply, long term care is a coordinated group of services designed to meet the needs of people of all ages with disabilities or serious or chronic illnesses. Long term care services can be provided in nursing facilities, community residential care settings or a person's own home.

To learn more about our current long term care environment in Hawaii, click the links to the right of this page.