At the end of the program, 75 percent of participants were able to perform more daily activities than they could before and symptoms of depression also improved, theresearchers said in the journal Health Affairs. Called Community Aging in Place, Advancing Better Living for Elders, or CAPABLE for short, the program was funded by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation.
The seniors who took part were each paired with a team for five months that included an occupational therapist, who made six visits; a registered nurse, who made four; and a handyman, who worked a full-day at the participant’s home installing assistive devices and doing repairs, according to the study.
The nurses and therapists helped participants identify three achievable goals for each member of the team and identify what barriers had to be overcome. For example, the therapist might survey a house for safety issues such as unsafe flooring, poorly lit entrances and railings in disrepair. The therapist then worked with the elderly person to identify assistive devices, repairs or modifications that could help achieve the participant’s goals. Next, the therapist created a work order for the handyman that prioritized those goals within a $1,300 budget for each dwelling.
Spending on assistive devices and home repairs ranged from $72 to $1,398 for each participant, the researchers said.
For months after the program ended, she said, participants called to tell her they were still setting goals and working on accomplishing them. She saw that as her low-income patients aged, their environments became the biggest barriers to good health. She had patients who had to crawl to the front door to let her in because their homes weren’t built to accommodate a wheelchair.