Wednesday, 20 August 2003: 13:45-15:15 | |||
S064 Health Care of the Elderly in the Rural and Frontier Areas (Globally and Domestically) | |||
| Sixty percent of the eldery globally reside in rural areas. Healthcare services are inadequate with regard to access, quality, and specialization of providers. It is estimated that at least 45% of elderly people in rural areas have 1 to 3 chronic illnesses. The average elderly person in the rural United States has to travel a minimum of 46 miles to access healthcare. Eighty to ninety percent of the care given to the elderly with acute and chronic illnesses is provided by family caregivers or significant others. The average person in the United States spends less than 72 hours in the hospital and is discharged back to the family and community setting. Therefore, the real outcome of their treatment regime is contigent upon the care provided by the family caregiver or significant other. It is imperative that a system of care be developed which will include the training of the family, the provision of supportive services, and the development of models for the delivery of healthcare services to the elderly in the rural areas. In this symposium we are providing an overview of the demographics of the elderly in rural areas (global and domestic), models for transitioning patients from institutions to community, discrepancies in reimbursement of healthcare in rural areas, the principles of networking and partnership, unusual clinical findings for aberrant behavior, the training of the family for family caregiving, and the prevention of iatrogenic dependency. | |||
| Chair: | Mary Harper | ||
| S064-001 Rural Community Resources, Challenges, and Strategies: Community Resources Available to Family Caregivers Don Bower | |||
| S064-002 Demographic Health Profiles of the Elderly in the Rural and Frontier Areas (Globally and Domestically) Rick Martinez | |||
| S064-003 Bridge to Mental Wellness: Transitioning from Institutional Living to Community/Family and Employment Robert Drake | |||
| S064-004 Preliminary Findings of Cognitive Impairment, Mood and Gait Disturbance, and Bone Demineralization Resulting from Neurotoxicity in the Rural Elderly Benjamin Roy | |||
| S064-005 An Overview of the Health Conditions and Needs of the Rural Elderly and their Family Caregivers Jayceen Boyle, Saundra L. Turner | |||
| S064-006 Development of Models for Family Caregiving for the Rural and Frontier Areas Mary Harper | |||
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