Nearly 2 million adults over 65 are completely or mostly homebound, while an additional 5.5 million seniors can get out only with significant difficulty or assistance. Almost 40% live by themselves.
Physician Peter Gliatto visits Carolyn Dickens, a lung cancer survivor who lives alone in the one-bedroom Harlem apartment she’s had for 31 years. Dickens doesn’t know what she’d do without ongoing medical attention from Gliatto. “Having to get up and go out, you know, putting on your clothes, it’s a task,” she says. “And I have the fear of falling.” Dec. 6, 2024, 7:00 a.m. ET
It’s a population whose numbers far exceed those living in nursing homes — about 1.2 million — and yet it receives much less attention from policymakers, legislators, and academics who study aging. To better understand the experiences of these seniors, I accompanied Gliatto on some home visits in New York City. Mount Sinai’s Visiting Doctors Program, established in 1995, is one of the oldest in the nation. Only 12% of older U.S. adults who rarely or never leave home have access to this kind of home-based primary care.
When I asked who checks in on her, Pettway mentioned her next-door neighbor. There’s no one else she sees regularly. Dickens worked with special education students for decades in New York City’s public schools. Now she lives on a small pension and Social Security — too much to qualify for Medicaid. Like Pettway, she has only a small fixed income, so she can’t afford in-home help.
Morrison said she’d been feeling dizzy over the past few weeks, and Gliatto gave her a basic neurological exam, asking her to follow his fingers with her eyes and touch her fingers to her nose.
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