'Village' movement and community health clinics offer alternative models of care

NPR: "The village movement dates to the 2001 founding of Beacon Hill Village in Boston. This year, the Village to Village Network launched to help other communities create their own senior support groups. Other sites created to help arrange help for seniors who want to live independently at home: Senior Helpers' services include companionship, conversation, meal planning and house cleaning as well as Alzheimer's and dementia care." Fifty of these nonprofit organizations already exist nationally, with another 100 in the works. "Only 5 percent of Americans ages 65 and older live in group quarters like nursing homes. In recent years, this share has been steadily declining (based on 2008 American Community Survey data). … A lot of villages are in better-off neighborhoods, but Capitol Hill and others use private grants or public money so they can offer a steeply discounted annual fee to those who need it" (Ludden, 8/23).

Denver Post: Meanwhile, a Colorado clinic offers a model which is viewed by many as "the future of medical practices."

"With millions of people expected to join the ranks of the insured in the next few years, health care experts say doctors will be called upon to more often act like supervisors, overseeing larger staffs of nurse practitioners and physicians' assistants. … At Salud community health clinic in Brighton, which receives federal funding that only partially covers the cost of caring for a patient population that is 52 percent uninsured and 29 percent on Medicaid, doctors share their offices with assistants and nurses" (Brown, 8/23).