All About Home Health Care Services

For senior citizens, in particular, home health care services are an alternative to residing in nursing care facilities and potentially experiencing discomfort through isolation and unfamiliar surroundings.

In stark contrast, senior citizens opting to stay and age gracefully at home are able to do so in a reassuring, soothing, and encouraging environment that is both familiar and comfortable to them.

With home health care services readily available to assist seniors in their at-home aging experience, those undergoing the aging process can be assured that their safety and overall comfort will be responsibly and professionally tended to in a fashion that enables seniors to maintain their independence while receiving the appropriate level of supportive care.

Far less expensive than the care seniors receive in hospital settings or within skilled nurse facilities, home health care services can be customized to perfectly meet the highly individual needs of seniors with respect to the number of visits scheduled, level of service required for individual ailments, and additional considerations such as assistance with tasks, appointment making, and more.

Home health care services is a booming industry, with a plethora of highly-specific services available to cater to the wide-ranging and unique needs of the senior citizen population. Ubiquitously available across the nation, home health services are able to immediately begin providing you in-home care and assistance in a highly professional, compassionate, and empathetic manner.

To Learn More About Home Health Care Services, Read our Informative Primer with Essential Tips, Easy-to-read Charts, and Advice Below.

Benefits of Employing Home Health Care Services

• Assist with occupational and physical therapy for post-surgery patients who would rather stay at home than a rehabilitation setting.
• Ability to conveniently schedule visits with highly skilled nursing care within the comforts of their own home with professionals trained to use high-tech medical equipment and administer therapies.
• Provides home health care aides with senior-specific training and resources to meet the needs of their diverse clientele in a highly professional manner.Training examples: fall prevention, emergency preparation, infection control, ADLs, and cultural sensitivity.
• Can provide assistance with specialized adaptations to your home environment to make your living space safer, more comfortable, and more accessible.
• Vastly more affordable than hospital-setting inpatient care or skilled nursing facilities.
• Specialized services cater to the highly individual medical, personal, cultural, financial and emotional needs of the patient.
• Provides family caretakers a break from the care and assistance responsibilities.
• Curtails frequency of hospital visits.
• Promotes health, healing, and overall happiness (studies indicate that patients recover far more rapidly within comfortable home-settings).
• Many assistance options available that are not limited to medical and healthcare. Available home care services can include help with tasks, chores, and general housework.
• Personalized home health care can ensure that the patients individual and potentially complex medical needs are attended to in a professional and compassionate manner.
• Provide peace of mind to both the patient and their families.
• Helps to soothe and comfort the stresses involved with the aging process.
• Can provide a multitude of specialized assistance with ADLs, also known as activities of daily living.
• Helps to encourage visits from friends and family due to an easier visitation process.
• Removes the need for hospital stays by providing high-caliber hospital-level care in an at-home setting.

Examples of Home Health Care Services and Types of Assistance

• Monitor blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and rate of breathing.
• Helps to maintain a comfortable living environment for seniors that is safe, healthy, and pleasant.
• Assess and correct safety risks in homes to provide a safe environment and faciliate mobility
• Physical therapy
• Speech therapy
• Occupational therapy
• Assistance with household chores including tasks such as dishes, vacuuming, laundry, watering plants, and meal preparation.
• Infusion (intravenous-style) therapy
• Provides individualized one-on-one assistance and support.
• Psychiatric care
• Infection prevention
• Wound care
• Pain management
• Medication management, administration, and education.
• Dietary and nutrition management, planning, counseling and education.
• Meal planning, cooking, and preparation.
• Disease education and prevention.
• Medical observation and assessments.
• Interface and maintain communication with your doctor to keep abreast on your latest health developments, prescription changes, and more.
• Monitoring chronic conditions, serious illness and unstable health problems such as pneumonia, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and diabetes.
• Provides companionship and healthy social interaction by engaging in reading, games, walks, meal-time, watching movies and more.

Types of In-Home Nursing Care Professionals

Home-Health Nurses

An in-home health care nurse typically focus on senior care and is a preferred option for many patients who would rather remain out of a hospital setting.
Education examples: ASN, BSN, RN diploma

Nurse Practitioners

Nurse practitioners are registered nurses who have undergone advanced education and are meticulously trained to diagnose and treat chronic conditions and a range of acute illnesses.
Education: Master’s degree and beyond

Physician Assistants

A physician assistant is an integral part of a comprehensive health care team composed of supervising doctors/physicians and other providers and healthcare professionals. The goals of a PA are to treat injury and illness treating human illness and injury by providing individualized health care services that are supervised by a doctor.They have undergone education to receive certification and must be state licensed to practice within their respective state.Education is extensive but lesser in scope than a full-fledged medical degree.

Physical Therapists

Physical therapists use a range of physical therapies and treatments to promote health, functionality, mobility, and improve physical impairment.

Physicians

A physician/doctor and is a medical professional who has studied the practice of medicine and is tasked with the restoration and promotion of health to their patients through the treatment of illness, ailments, impairments, and disease. Education is extensive and encompasses upwards of a decade of higher learning.

Occupational Therapists

Occupational therapists employ interventional means to develop a range of appropriate and effective activities for individuals or groups that are disabled, injured, or mentally impaired. Occupational therapists are college educated and must be licensed in the state they are practicing in.

Home-Health Aides

Home health aides assist aging, disabled, or impaired patients by engaging in a range of tasks designed to make the lives of their patients healthier and safer. often helping with ADLs, household chores, and meal prep, home health aides may not have formal education in health care but typically have at least a high school diploma. Home health aides typically must complete testing and training before becoming eligible to provide in-home services to patients.

Personal companions and homemakers

Personal care aides provide companionship to patients in the form of conversation, watching movies together, exercise, reading, meal-time and more. They may also provide housekeeping services and engage in a range of ADL-style tasks. Education may vary, but no formal education is required.

Conclusion

For countless families, home health care is a fundamentally essential and critically important service that is far preferred to placing their aging, disabled, or chronically ill loved one in a hospital or nursing home setting.

Removing much of the stress from health care decision making, in-home care services are a convenient, affordable, and effective option that offers plenty of benefits to patients and their families.

Offering an expansive range of health care and assistance services, in-home health care professionals have a vast wealth of knowledge, training, and expertise geared at providing high-caliber service for disabled and aging patients and are able to provide a level of care comparable to that found in traditional medical settings such as a hospital or nursing facility.

With expert knowledge in assessing individual patient needs and developing corresponding care plans, home health care professionals are able to help patients seamlessly and painlessly navigate the unfamiliar and confusing terrain involved with facilitating a plethora of medical appointments and medications, in addition to new life developments, and disheartening medical complications.

The advantages of employing the services of a home health care agency are innumerable, with safety, affordability, and comfort topping the list of patient benefits. With its holistic, patient-centered approach, home health care services are among the most prudent choices a senior or disabled patient can make for their health care need.

Safe, effective, and proven to facilitate better health and healing outcomes, patients remaining within the comfort of their own homes are not only happier but as studies indicate, proven to be healthier.

Expert in-home care administered by home health care professionals will not only prevent rehospitalization but will reduce the chances of a senior or disabled patient requiring placement within a nursing home setting. By providing high-quality, individualized health care, home health care professionals ensure that their patients are able to maintain functional, autonomous, confident, healthy, happy and dignified lives with independence and free will.

As the home health care industry continues to skyrocket in popularity, services are becoming increasingly specialized to cater to a highly individualized clientele. Now easier than ever is the ability to find in-home health care assistance to fit your distinct needs. With the abundance of in-home health care businesses in existence, it is relatively simple and straightforward process to procure affordable services that are perfect for you.

Allowing you to remain functional and live in the most dignified fashion possible, home health care services enable you to live out your golden years gracefully and comfortably. Giving you and your family a sense of security through peace of mind, home health care services will readily fill your medical, emotional, and ADL needs while ensuring that you receive the compassionate, empathetic, and professional level of care you deserve.