Whether you’re one of the growing number of seniors in America (those over 85 are the fastest growing segment of the population!), or charged with the sometimes daunting task of caring for one, it is often difficult to know what level of care is needed when health begins to decline. Is it time to discuss assisted living or nursing home placement? Or can a solution as simple as home health care help you remain in your home safely, delaying or avoiding residential care?
Home care’s scope is broad. It encompasses a wide array of both health and supportive services delivered at your home. This ranges from seniors who need help with activities of daily living in order to remain in their homes; to post-surgical patients needing assistance with wound care or rehabilitative services such as physical therapy; to the chronically ill who are maintained with skilled supervision, support services and home medical equipment.
Frequently, the term home health care is used to refer to skilled services, meaning the services of a registered nurse or physical therapist, to provide IV therapies, or to provide in-home tele-monitoring, where daily vital signs are monitored from the patient’s home and electronically communicated to the home care agency. But in fact, the generic term home care encompasses a fuller scope that includes the range of both medical and supportive services designed to assist the post-acute, chronically ill, disabled and elderly populations that home care providers serve.
For home care patients, things like help with personal hygiene, light housekeeping and laundry, dressing, preparation of balanced meals, and safety monitoring to prevent falls are as important to their rehabilitation and functioning as the more sophisticated health technologies that are also delivered in their home. Both in-home clinical care and support services are cost effective by reducing hospital stays and by preventing or delaying institutionalization.
But can you afford it? The cost of home care services are often significantly less per day than a day of nursing home or in-patient hospital care. This financial incentive, coupled with the fact that most patients prefer to be at home, makes home care a natural solution.
Home care services can be paid for in a variety of ways, either through Medicare (when a patient is eligible), Medicaid (when financially qualified and approved for home care services), long term care insurance (depending on the policy), specialty programs that provide funding (such as hospice or the Veteran’s Administration), or can be paid for privately.
New York has and must continue to look to home care as a significant source of long term care services to keep patients in their homes and communities. In the future, we should expect to see more people taking advantage of all that home care provides, shifting utilization away from more costly settings into home care.
