Home health care helps seniors live independently for as long as possible, given the limits of their medical condition. It covers a wide range of services and can often delay the need for long-term nursing home care.More specifically, home health care may include occupational and physical therapy, speech therapy, and even skilled nursing. It may involve helping the elderly with activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, and eating. Or it may include assistance with cooking, cleaning, other housekeeping jobs, and monitoring one’s daily regimen of prescription and over-the-counter medications.

At this point, it is important to understand the difference between home health care and home care services. Although they sound the same (and home health care may include some home care services), home health care is more medically oriented. While home care typically includes chore and housecleaning services, home health care usually involves helping seniors recover from an illness or injury. That is why the people who provide home health care are often licensed practical nurses, therapists, or home health aides. Most work for home health agencies, hospitals, or public health departments that are licensed by the state.How Do I Make Sure That Home Health Care Is Quality Care?
As with any important purchase, it is always a good idea to talk with friends, neighbors, and your local area agency on aging to learn more about the home health care agencies in your community.
In looking for a home health care agency, the following 20 questions can be used to help guide your search:

How long has the agency been serving this community? Does the agency have any printed brochures describing the services it offers and how much they cost? If so, get one. Is the agency an approved Medicare provider? Is the quality of care certified by a national accrediting body such as the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations? Does the agency have a current license to practice (if required in the state where you live)? Does the agency offer seniors a “Patients’ Bill of Rights” that describes the rights and responsibilities of both the agency and the senior being cared for? Does the agency write a plan of care for the patient (with input from the patient, his or her doctor and family), and update the plan as necessary? Does the care plan outline the patient’s course of treatment.

 

Few decisions are more personal — involving both health and death — than those embodied in an advance health care directive or a living will, or a similar document. Some individuals want their lives prolonged by any means necessary, while others want medical treatments withheld, allowing for a natural death.An advance health care directive lets caregivers and family and medical providers know a person’s healthcare wishes if he’s unable to speak for himself. The document can also appoint someone else to speak with legal authority for the person if he’s unable to do so for himself.

If someone plans to set up an advance health care directive, living will, or similar document, here’s what he needs to think about:By the way, we hate spam as much as you do and will never sell your email address.
1. The person should consider how he wants to live during a terminal illness, and what his end-of-life preferences are when creating a health care directive or living will.

It’s not easy to bring up the subject of dying (especially if it’s your parent you’re caring for). But you, the individual, and the rest of his family will gain some peace of mind if you can get him to start thinking and talking about this subject, and eventually to execute documents that set down his wishes.
·One way many people get this discussion started is by showing the person the advance health care documents they’ve prepared for themselves. This both breaks the ice and gives the person a model on which to base his own documents.