Cash LTC benefits allow choice and flexibility – whether it be for living arrangements or the use of technology. Here’s a look at just a couple ways that Cash could pay off big time for your clients.
The single most important part of your client’s long term care plan may not even be missing.
Cash – like the alternative benefit in Mutual of Omaha’s Custom Solutions product — eliminates roadblocks to care and places control of the claim firmly in the hands of the clients and alleviates headaches over covered care, reimbursement forms. It also assures the client that no matter how LTC services evolve between purchase and claim, they’re positioned to be able to handle the changes.
The real key to Cash lies in what we know about how Long Term Care claims really work. The greatest majority of claims begin with home care and once in home care, statistics tell us that nearly 80 percent of that care is provided by informal caregivers. If your client’s policy doesn’t contain a cash benefit, the flexibility and freedom they will covet at claim time won’t be there.
That means that home care solutions like ‘Granny Pods’ http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/granny-pods-debut-nursing-home-alternative-article-1.1208916 are off the table unless the client wants to pay out of pocket.
The 288-square-foot Granny Pod – officially called a MedCottage – offers technology found in most modern hospital rooms, including safety rails, lighted flooring, built-in cameras and a defibrillator machine.
It comes equipped with water and electricity, as well as “robotic features” that monitor vital signs, filter air contaminants and “communicate with the outside world,” according to parent company N2Care’s website.
Today’s LTC policies are static, providing a contract in 2014 that a client has to live when they go on claim twenty years or more down the road. There appears to be little in today’s policies that will allow for the introduction of the type of telemedicine-related technology one can envision being available in the future.
In a 2011 article in Long Term living magazine (http://www.ltlmagazine.com/article/technology-takes-long-term-care) , Majd Alwan, PhD, a leading expert in the field of emerging technologies for the senior care market, shares his thoughts on the top technology innovations in long-term care that have emerged to broader use over the past decade.
“Telemedicine has the potential to allow LTC providers to remotely access highly trained clinicians and specialists to help them deliver higher-acuity services and improve the overall quality and timeliness of care delivered, while reducing transitions, especially in rural areas where access to such clinicians is limited,” says Alwan. “Telehealth allows LTC providers to help their residents in managing chronic conditions, improving outcomes and preventing hospitalizations and hospital readmissions through remote patient monitoring.”
Alwan noted that readily available mobile devices like smart phones or tablets act as a hub for monitoring devices that monitor blood sugar or blood pressure. The date is transmitted wirelessly, allow caregivers to monitor behavior and activities and detect changes or abnormalities indicative of early changes in health status. The simplest of these technologies uses motion sensors while others incorporate more sophisticated sensing modalities that assess sleep quality and measure heart and breathing rates.
Cash – with no restrictions or paperwork – will allow a client to utilize services such as these without concern about whether the policy will pay. Cash does.
Available as an alternative to reimbursement and available on the first day on claim, Mutual of Omaha Custom Solutions cash pays your client 40% of the monthly benefit amount – as a lump sum and tax free — at the beginning of every month. Premiums ARE immediately waived.