Burden of getting medical care can exhaust older patients https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/040124_aging_medical_care/burden-getting-medical-care-can-exhaust-older-patients/
Coordinating the care they needs has became a part-time job for many older Americans, and the toll the health care system extracts is evidence of the poor fit between older adults’ capacities and the health care system’s demands.
#Tucson #Arizona
*sighs in PT appointment today**
@TucsonSentinel As US healthcare worker for over 40 years I second that. A lot of older Americans need a neutral advocate to help navigate overly complex systems. They tend to give up.
As a healthcare "consumer"-do I really have a choice but to consume- I am pretty unhappy with my insurance company this morning. Their website kept rejecting my input, giving me error message each time. I finally reached a live human she blithely told me it was too late to fix my request.🤬
Complaint sent. Aargh!
@TucsonSentinel @roland Different health system for me (UK/NHS), but this resonates with some thinking that’s very top-of-mind for me right now, with an elderly parent requiring care in light of various medical complications. I often wonder how she’d navigate the system without support. Also, the expectation is that she’d be self-managing, so serving as her primary contact/care requires another layer of unaccounted for active effort…
@TucsonSentinel it's a pita and I'm only 45. Getting care was so much easier in Japan where I lived for 17 years. We need nationalized health care for everyone now!