What Is Home Health Care?

There is a lot of confusion around the terms used in long-term care

Ordinarily, you hear names like: home health, personal assistance, in-home companion, in-home care, etc. What do they all mean? Let's get to the basics and answer some fundamental issues surrounding naming conventions.

Here is a brief guide to figuring out what exactly is senior home health and whether it will meet your needs.

First, you want to figure out your in-home care needs. Are they medically-related or non-medical services?

Types of senior in-home care services that are medical:

• skilled nursing for issues, such as wound or medication management

• physical therapy for rehabilitation or balance training

• occupational therapy for rehabilitation or balance training

• speech therapy for issues related to swallowing

Types of senior in-home care services that are non-medical:

• companionship

• assistance with grooming, bathing, toileting

• light housekeeping

• errand running

Select an in-home care provider. Then, select a provider who provide services that you need.

Medically related tasks

Home health agencies will help with medically related tasks. Are you Medicare eligible? Therefore, you will want one that is accredited by Medicare. Below are some reasons you could use a medical home health agency:

• recent discharge from the hospital

• discharge from a rehabilitation hospital

• knee/hip/joint replacement

• difficulty with balance

• increased fall risk

• wound management

• psychiatric services

• and many others

Non-medically related tasks

For the non-medical aspect of home health, it can be a little more confusing. In addition, these agencies go by several different names. However, they all mean the same thing! Usually, agencies have a small pool of staff that they send out to homes to assistance with typically lighter duty tasks. Later on, we’ll talk about how to pay for senior in-home care.Whenever you see these terms, they all mean non-medical in-home care:

• home companion agency

• personal assistance services (PAS)

• in-home care aide

Now that you know the proper terms to look for, your search will become that much easier.