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Long-term care refers to a broad range of supportive medical, personal and social services for people who are unable to provide for their own needs for an extended period of time. This need for care from others may be caused by accident, illness, dementia, stroke, depression or frailty. Personal needs may include help to move about, dress, bathe, eat, use a toilet, medicate and avoid incontinence. Also help may be needed with household cleaning, preparing meals, shopping, paying bills, visiting the doctor, answering the phone and taking medications properly. In other cases long-term care may consist of providing supervision, companionship or support for loved ones.

Long-term care requires a healthy person to provide for the person needing care. This support can be offered at home or in an institution. As a rule, care recipients prefer to stay at home and most of the time family and friends providing that care, prefer the home as well. But the deciding factor of where to receive help ultimately centers on the intensity and amount of services needed for support. For example, a wife caring for her overweight husband may be unable to help him bathe, dress, use the toilet or even transfer from the bed to a chair. She will either have to hire aides to come to the home or put him in an institution. Another example might be an Alzheimer's patient who has become unmanageable and must receive constant supervision. This may be impossible at home and an Alzheimer's facility may be the only solution. . . .(16 pages printed)