Riverside’s ChooseHome program provides gift to residents wanting to live at home throughout retirement years
Ask Tom and Bev Baker and they’ll tell you straight.
“ChooseHome saved our marriage.”
And the Bakers aren’t alone in their feeling that Riverside Health System’s newest option for older adults provides the very solutions they need to age in a place of their choosing.
ChooseHome, Virginia’s first official provider of what’s called Community-Based Continuing Care, has become one of the fastest growing programs of its kind in the country.
“Most of us want to live in our own homes for our entire lives,” said Rick Jackson, Executive Director of the Riverside Center for Excellence in Aging and Lifelong Health, which administers the ChooseHome program. “Today, with 10,000 people turning 65 every day, a lot more are thinking about how and where they will live during their retirement.”
Many, after reviewing all of their options, will find a new home in a continuing care retirement community and end up making an enjoyable life for themselves there. But others want to stay at home.
That’s what’s possible for qualified individuals 60 and older with ChooseHome.
What is ChooseHome?
At its core, Riverside’s ChooseHome gives residents in the greater Williamsburg region, Gloucester and Virginia Peninsula the option to live in their home as they age.
This Continuing Care At Home program – also called life care at home – brings together the resources of a health system to help members stay as healthy as possible as they age so they can safely remain in their home as they age.
Jackson said not to think of it as a home health program. Rather, think of it as a retirement community program, except in your own home.
Because the program takes elements of retirement community living to help residents stay in their own home, it is licensed through the Virginia Bureau of Insurance and provides priority access to a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRCs) should members require a higher level of care in the future, such as assisted living or 24-hour nursing care.
Why Choose ChooseHome?
When the Bakers moved to Williamsburg, following decades of moving from state to state as a military family, Tom was 69 and Bev was 62.
“We recognized that we needed to be planning ahead,” Tom said.
Tom and Bev decided they would move in to Patriots Colony at Williamsburg when Tom turned 80.
But when 80 arrived, despite Tom’s need to plan ahead, Bev wasn’t quite ready.
“We joke that ChooseHome saved our marriage,” Bev said. “ChooseHome was the perfect marriage for us,” allowing them to stay home as long as they could and also get the support they needed as they aged.
ChooseHome’s Range of Benefits
The Bakers aren’t the only members of ChooseHome with highly personal reasons for enrolling in the program, Jackson said.
“When someone asks why choose ChooseHome, we tell them exactly what our members have told us,” Jackson said.
Current ChooseHome members, when polled by Riverside, reported that they chose the ChooseHome program because it:
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- helps maintain independence;
- prevents isolation if and when more advanced care is required;
- eliminates the possibility of becoming a burden on adult children;
- provides help coordinating care with a trusted advocate;
- covers the costs of long-term care;
- ensures access to care when you need it in places you prefer;
- provides help navigating the options, costs and realities of aging related insurances, from what Medicare covers to long-term care insurance and what ChooseHome offers; and
- helps provide financial security and ease concerns of outliving money and resources.
Learn more about Riverside’s ChooseHome program by clicking here or call (757) 585-2654. ChooseHome team members are available for a personal consultation or Long-Term Care Insurance review.
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