Long Term Care Insurance :: Activities of Dailing Living

Some of the stats on this page are courtesy of CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Fact:
"Most long-term care is to assist people with support services such as activities of daily living like dressing, bathing, and using the bathroom.”

Activities of Daily Living - Also referred to here as ADLs.

All Tax-Qualified LTC policies will trigger when you need assistance with 2 of 6 ADLs or a cognitive impairment.  ADLs are things we mostly take for granted in our younger, healthier years.  When you wake up in the morning and hop out of bed and get dressed, you are doing ADLs.

The standard definition of the six types of Activities of Daily Living are:
• Eating
• Bathing
• Dressing
• Toileting
• Transferring
• Maintaining continence.

While a specific definition of these activities will vary a bit from one long term care insurance company to another, we will discuss the definitions in general.

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.

All of the companies we offer here sell Tax-Qualified Long-Term Care Insurance policies. One of the requirements for an insurance policy to be tax qualified is that it must be triggered when one needs assistance with any two ADLs.  This will be something to be aware of when you are shopping.

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