There are various home health treatment options available - like most things covered by medicare, medicare won't cover the real costs of treatment.
The entire industry is massively and convolutedly regulated and there are increasing numbers of players in the business who's primary goal is not providing elder care (I can think of one nursing home company where the primary goal of the CEO is to sell of the real estate, milk the company of cash, then dump the business - perhaps a textbook case of the human impacts of "greed")
A useful and interesting timeline:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/nursinghomes/timeline.html