GOING IT ALONE

[GailL1]

KFF Health News 12/02/2024 - Homebound Seniors Living Alone Often Slip Through Health System’s Crack... 

Across the country, about 2 million adults 65 and older are completely or mostly homebound, while an additional 5.5 million seniors can get out only with significant difficulty or assistance. This is almost surely an undercount, since the data is from more than a dozen years ago.

It’s a population whose numbers far exceed those living in nursing homes — about 1.2 million — and yet it receives much less attention from policymakers, legislators, and academics who study aging.

Consider some eye-opening statistics about completely homebound seniors from a study published in 2020 in JAMA Internal Medicine: Nearly 40% have five or more chronic medical conditions, such as heart or lung disease. Almost 30% are believed to have “probable dementia.” Seventy-seven percent have difficulty with at least one daily task such as bathing or dressing.

Almost 40% live by themselves.

That “on my own” status magnifies these individuals’ already considerable vulnerability, something that became acutely obvious during the covid-19 outbreak, when the number of sick and disabled seniors confined to their homes doubled.