November 21, 2017 – At Home

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Anchor lead: Home visits by medical professionals could help seniors understand their own care, Elizabeth Tracey reports

What’s the top problem for older people with chronic health conditions? A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation identifies confusions about medications and healthcare regimens as number one. Alicia Arbaje, a geriatrics expert at Johns Hopkins, says she would address the problem with first gathering more information.

Arbaje: I would have older adults and their caregivers at home videotape what they’re doing, what the home looks like and where they’re keeping their medications so that we could really see with our own eyes. Then I would ideally have a pharmacist go into the home and really help people organize their medications or we could have nurses doing that as part of home health care. I’d really like for us to be able to do that every time a person is transitioning from one healthcare setting back to the other. Really understanding what their home environment is like before we start adding more medications. :32

Arbaje notes that video can easily be obtained with a smart phone, perhaps by a tech-savvy grandchild. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.