Getting Personal With Care

Photograph by Russell Sasaki

When stroke patients return home from the hospital, their motor skills are often still so impaired that they are prone to falls and other accidents, often injuring themselves so seriously they land back in the hospital. What’s more, many can’t bathe themselves.

As a result, many families end up making the wrenching decision to send their loved one to a nursing home.

To avoid such problems, two health organizations and a foundation have joined forces to help stroke victims in Los Angeles get the kind of personal care they need. With a three-year, $700,000 grant from UniHealth Foundation, in Woodland Hills, Calif., two charities — Valley Presbyterian Hospital, in Van Nuys, Calif., and the Organization for the Needs of the Elderly, in Los Angeles — provide day care for stroke victims.

Through the charities’ program, patients are trained to regain their motor skills and given help when they have trouble eating; the charities also take charge of coordinating the health care of the stroke victims. As a result of their efforts, the charities say they have kept one-quarter of the 274 people in the program from entering nursing homes.

The Stroke Prevention and Management Program also sends health-care workers to bathe people who cannot do it themselves. Mary Odell, president of UniHealth, says the foundation would like to see that aspect of the program have an effect that reaches beyond the homes of its participants.

“Our hope is that public-policy makers and private insurance carriers take a look at this issue so they can see how much more cost-effective it is to have people stay in their own homes,” she says.

Here, elderly stroke patients join children in an intergenerational day care program designed to engage participants in activities aimed at improving motor skills.