Yet she is still too frail to return home alone. The home helps her make an application to Medicaid to pay for more nursing home care. Doris is improving now with medication and better nutrition but is terribly depressed. The Problem Doris is a composite of common and familiar stories involving seniors in Minnesota and other states. To define long-term care clearly, therefore, we must first define acute care.
Acute care presumes an active illness or health problem that needs attention.
The term acute care refers to health care typically offered in hospitals and doctors' offices to diagnose and treat health conditions. To make the distinction between long-term care and acute care more complicated, most acute care for older people is directed at managing chronic long term health problems. First and foremost, it is a response to disability and functional impairment. As a result of illnesses, accidents or conditions developed at birth or during developmental stages, some people experience long term or even permanent inability to perform tasks associated with everyday living. In the jargon of long-term care, these functional tasks have been labeled activities of daily living or ADLs.