Blog #2 Wildcard

In chapter 2 starting on page 46 of our LTC textbook for HSA 3222 is section titled "The long-term care system should involve families and care delivery." It is a section that is only a page and a half long, but I fell that it carries alot of useful information while revealing a major moral issue.

The title itself gives away the one great idea. Allow more family members to handle most of these duties rather than pay a health care provider. The consumer would most likely feel more comfortable with a family member over a health care provider and it would be a more cost effective method. Even if the family member would recieve some sort of reimbursement it would still more than likely be less costly. If the the health care providers do not believe that the family member knows the "proper protocals" for assisting the consumer, then the health care provider should have some sort of training. The family memebers providing care could as be placed in some program under the primary health care provider.

The moral problem is in the last sentence of this section: "Organizations representing health care professionals tend to resist attempts to allow what they see as potential replacement by untrained civilians (Pratt p.47)." I am not even going to get into how wrong that is because it is so obvious... But I would like to say that there is enough "business" for everyone in the health care feild, if they want to look at it in that prespective. Health care providers are already definatly short handed and LTC consumers will increase drastically in the future.
So my question to those representatives is... Why bit more than you can chew?