However, receiving care in old age is not cheap. If it is not paid with the state budget funds, and they pay far from everything, the average Lithuanian pension in the new old people’s home would not be enough even for a week.
At least in the ones that the Addere company, having received financing from Bigbank, promises to install in the purchased Vilnius hotel “Ibis Styles”. According to a press release, it will be converted into a nursing and long-term care home.
Prices bite the rare pensioner
Addere’s marketing and communication manager Alina Kemežienė explained that the company has contracts with the Sickness Funds.
Therefore, in the nursing homes it represents, nursing and supportive treatment services are provided free of charge to people from all over Lithuania who have a doctor’s referral for up to 120 days a year.
“We do not charge premiums for care in the hospital in Trakai and we do not plan to do so in the new hospital in Vilnius,” assured A. Kemežienė.
However, if a person wants to stay longer or needs care longer than 120 days, it would cost a lot.
“After the end of the financing of the Sick Funds, a person can continue to receive the nursing and supportive treatment services he needs in our hospital, paying for them with his own funds. The rates for the services are the same or slightly lower than what the Health Insurance Fund pays for these services,” explained the marketing and communication managers.
According to her, when a person wants to continue paid care services in the company’s old people’s home, general care would cost 79 euros per day, and care for dementia patients would cost 99 euros per day.
Thus, a month in these can cost from 2,370 to almost 3,000 euros, and currently the average old-age pension in Lithuania is 596 euros.
The idea came from looking at the business model in Sweden
The first Scandinavian-type nursing home was installed in Trakai in 2020. The founders of the company came up with the idea after working with Swedish partners for many years, so the goal was to create a nursing home where a person would be given all the necessary attention and conditions.
The director of Addere and one of the shareholders, Kristina Judinė, claims to notice that in Lithuania, when caring for a person, there is still a tendency to exalt medicine itself as an object and to focus on a person’s illness.
Well, in Sweden, according to her, the most important thing is the person and the totality of his needs: “Communication and understanding are especially important there, we are looking for ways to enjoy life as fully as possible.”
The Swedish model will also be presented in Vilnius
The company will have its second nursing home in Vilnius, Minsk street. It is intended to provide comfortable single and double rooms. There will also be places for cozy chapels, because the spiritual needs of people occupy a very important place in the nursing philosophy of these homes. In total, the company will create 160 jobs.
They will also be offered to the staff of the Ibis Styles hotel operating here. Well, 150 places are planned for clients in the new nursing home.
More than 230 people are cared for and cared for in existing nursing homes in Trakai. More than 200 employees work in this institution: nurses, physiotherapists, doctors, social workers, music therapists, pastoral workers and other specialists.
“In Lithuania, there is still a myth that people are taken to nursing homes to die. We say that people under care come to us to live as long as their physical and spiritual strength allows,” says K. Judinė.
In these nursing homes, mass is offered every week, and all those who want to, but cannot get out of bed, are visited by a Catholic or Orthodox priest. The nursing home regularly hosts various art therapy classes and events: concerts, art exhibitions, performances, poetry afternoons, etc.
“Scandinavian philosophy of nursing encourages to include the person being cared for in everyday, natural life as much as possible. Yes, many of the persons under our care can no longer walk firmly, but they can, for example, help prepare their favorite dishes, do handicrafts and similar activities,” says K. Judinė.
