Activities of Daily Living (ADL's) for Long Term Care Insurance

According to CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:

"long-term care is a variety of services that includes medical and non-medical care to people who have a chronic illness or disability.  Long-term care helps meet health or personal needs. Most long-term care is to assist people with support services such as activities of daily living like dressing, bathing, and using the bathroom.”

The assistance required involves the basic activities people do when they wake up in the morning and generally take for granted such as walking, taking a shower, going to the bathroom , eating, taking  medications, and many other normal activities. In order to determine who is eligible for long term care services in a long term care insurance policy you need to require help in typically 2 of 6 ADLs or a cognitive impairment.

An inability to perform a certain number of activities that are considered basic to normal living, activities are called Activities of Daily Living (ADLs); or the presence of a cognitive impairment.

Six activities, each of which is generally considered central to leading a normal life, comprise the activities of daily living. These activities are usually shortened to ADLs, and include:
• Eating
• Bathing
• Dressing
• Toileting
• Transferring
• Maintaining continence.

Although the specific definition of these activities may vary a bit from one long term care insurance company or insurer to another, the definitions are commonly those discussed below.

Bathing means washing oneself in a bath tub or shower, or by sponge bath. It also includes the individual’s ability to get into and out of a shower or tub.

Continence means the individual’s ability to:
• control his or her bowel or bladder functions; or
• adequately perform needed person hygiene, including taking care of a catheter or colostomy bag, when unable to control bowel or bladder functions.

Dressing means the individual’s ability to put on and take off:
• all items of clothing; and
• any needed braces, fasteners or artificial limbs.

Eating means the process of putting food into the body:
• from some receptacle, such as a cup or plate;
• by means of a feeding tube; or
• intravenously.

Toileting means:
• getting to and from the toilet;
• getting on and off the toilet; and
• performing associated personal hygiene.

Transferring means moving into or out of a:
• chair;
• bed; or
• wheelchair.