A person with AIDS may be capable of performing ADLs or other activities, but the effort required may be exhausting, prompting the need for home-delivered meals, aides, or homemakers. However, many private insurers do not pay for services such as paid helpers at home. Medicaid may be more likely than private insurers to cover personal care attendants and homemakers. The U.S. health system is undergoing unprecedented changes in its organization, financing, and delivery of care. In a recent commentary on the topic, they point out that ignoring or minimizing attention to CHSR is both shortsighted and ultimately costly for families and the entire nation.
Children merit a separate research focus for several reasons, assert the authors.
Since children's cognitive, emotional, and social development is constantly changing, outcome measures must be sensitive to the interplay between change in development and change in health. Moreover, alterations in the rate of development are themselves important outcomes for children and should be part of studies on children's health-related quality of life. Fewer than 5 percent of children are affected with one of the conditions usually addressed by outcomes research in adults, for example, diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis. Yet one in three medically underserved persons in the United States is younger than 18 years of age. The kit contains a set of questionnaires that ask consumers about their experiences with their health plans, sample formats for reporting results to the consumers, and a handbook to help sponsors implement the surveys and produce the reports.