What Is In-Home Health Care?

Home health care is “care for someone within their home.” There are many different kinds of care available. It is possible to receive home health care that is both medical and non-medical, based on the individual’s specific requirements.

Care for the Elderly at Home

In-home health care can be divided into two main categories:

Medical Services

A medical professional, such as a physician, registered nurse, or physical therapist, provides home health care. In addition to wound care, they could provide physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Education of patients and caregivers, injections, and nutrition therapy are examples of additional services that could be provided. An individual’s doctor must order medical home health care for the person to be able to avail of the services. Check out Home Care Agency in Stafford County.

Non-Medical Treatment Options

In terms of non-medical care, the care is defined as “assistance with activities of daily living—things like bathing and dressing, meal preparation and transportation to and from physician appointments,” among other things. You’ll need a home health or home care worker to do it to get it.

In-Home Healthcare Expectations

A registered nurse meets with the patient’s family to learn about their health goals and the specific services they require. The nurse then creates a detailed personalized care plan. To help the person find the right Personal Care Assistant Service Arlington with the right skills, personality, and schedule compatibility to care for a patient in their own home, the company holds a meeting with the patient and their family. Anyone interested in receiving high-quality home health care services should be prepared to go through a similar experience.

To begin home health care, the patient and provider work together to determine which days and hours are most convenient. It ranges from a few hours a day to 24-hour supervision.

In addition to providing direct patient care, home health care providers serve as a liaison between the patient and their healthcare team, facilitating communication. They are the physician’s eyes and ears in the patient’s home. Because the doctor only sees them on rare occasions, [the home health aide] may be able to catch warning signs and symptoms before they become serious.

Advantages

Experts say that home health care has many advantages. It allows the elderly to remain at home rather than move to a care facility for the most part.

In addition to reducing isolation among the elderly, home health care can improve their mental and physical well-being. At times, home health care aides were the only people patients saw. Most often, the person getting care and the care form a bond. By spending hours each day—and sometimes days—with a single person, they become a part of their family.

Home health care services can also bring down hospital readmissions. Nurse visits at home have been shown in one systematic review of patients with heart failure to reduce the risk of hospital readmission and death for up to six months after they were released from the hospital.