A term used in long-term care in which efforts are made to avoid institutionalization of patients by having them directed (“channeled”) to community based long-term care services. From 1980 to 1985, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) and other federal agencies financed a demonstration of the concept, which used comprehensive case management, but ended the demonstration when a study showed no lowering of cost. More recently, reports suggest that when a gatekeeper participates in the financial planning as well as the health care decisions, significant savings may be realized.
The transmitting of information and advice through a human being (referred to as the channel) to someone in this world from a spirit guide in another world. Channeling is claimed to be distinct from spiritualism, communication from spirits of a deceased person through a medium, in that the channel contacts a wise unembodied spirit entity, who may be a deceased person but is usually an evolved entity such as an ascended master, to be given teaching of a philosophical kind. Each channel only has contact with one, or perhaps two, spirit entities to whom he or she turns for guidance.
It is claimed that anyone can learn to become a channel, and there are now books on do-it-yourself channeling. All that is needed is the power to meditate, and in this way it is possible to enter the collective unconscious and so draw on the pool of wisdom to which everyone has access.