Delivering care to seniors will look different after the pandemic as senior care providers focus on social isolation and chronic disease management, a new report from Insights found.
Isolation has become a familiar term amid the coronavirus pandemic as social distancing and lockdown measures intentionally kept people apart to keep them safe. Now that vaccination efforts are well underway and the country is reopening, the healthcare industry must combat this challenge and the emerging delayed care crisis.
Eighty-one percent of senior care providers say they are focusing on social isolation in their patient populations. This proportion jumps to 88 percent in skilled nursing and long-term care facilities.
“Regardless of the situation, if there are cases of isolation, behavioral or mental health wellbeing needs to be a significant part of the conversation,” one nursing home administrator highlighted during qualitative follow-up. “One question that hasn’t been adequately answered on a large-scale is understanding the health risk and the collateral health risks which are isolation and depression.”
