Defining Home Health Care Services for Clear Understanding

While we may find it difficult to accept, most of us will need to engage some type of care assistance as we get older. You may be used to dealing with everyday chores yourself or share your duties with your spouse and family members. But with advancing age, your situation changes, and you may find it hard to take care of yourself. If moving to a nursing home or retirement community doesn’t appeal to you, home care services may be a viable option that allows you to live safely in your home with your family and family nearby.

The different types of home health care services

To define care for the elderly at home, it needs mentioning that a wide variety of caregiver services are available. These include home health care, nursing care, as well as caregivers providing specialized medical services, like laboratory workups. Depending on the individual patient’s requirements, the right care plan and services needed at home will be determined. 

Caregiver services may include:

Maintaining household 

With advancing age, if you find keeping a household running smoothly a difficult proposition, you could explore laundry, housekeeping, shopping, and handyman services as part of home care. If keeping track of bills and appointments is troubling you, then financial and healthcare management services could be included as well. 

Health care

Certain healthcare services can be provided at home by trained caregivers of in-home care service providers like AtHomeCareService. These include home health nurses, occupational therapists, or social workers. You could check with your health or insurance services to find out what type of coverage is included, though you may need to pay some cost yourself. Caregiver services can also include hospice care. 

Personal care

Help your loved ones with daily activities like bathing, dressing, meal preparation. Personal care services could be for a few hours a day to 24-hours-a-day live-in care. Besides, limited assistance like taking blood pressure or medication reminders can also be provided. Also, your caregiver can help in taking the elderly to physician’s appointments or run errands. 

Tips for Hiring the Best Caregiver

Hiring a caregiver depends partially on the kind of assistance you are looking for. Here are some basic tips to keep in mind for a better chance of hiring the right caregiver for your loved one.

• Conduct a face-to-face interview with each applicant after screening them on the phone.  
• Make sure that the potential person is comfortable with all the specific tasks, skills, and schedules involved.
• Ask for several references of persons and check with them individually about reliability, punctuality, trustworthiness, and the ability of the caregiver to deal with stress.  
• If you are hiring through an agency, make a background check, especially to find out what is covered. There are online agencies that can perform background checks reasonably, and inform you about potential problems if any.
• Discuss with the caregiver about payment schedules and compensation. Don’t make an advance payment before they begin work. 
• If the person does not fit the bill, move on.