A home care service is a care service that provides skilled services (by nurses, therapists, and social workers) and/or unskilled services (by home health aides, certified nursing assistants, and homemakers) to patients in their homes. A home health agency may also provide temporary staffing for healthcare facilities.
If you are thinking about establishing a home health care agency, you will need to get your due diligence done. For getting a license you would need a clear state and national-wide criminal record. You need to submit your fingerprints to an FDLE-approved center like FEFPS. Our center is veteran-founded, offering livescan, high-quality, and affordable fingerprinting services.
Along with getting your fingerprints scanned, your employees would also need to get fingerprinted. All the service care providers, including ones offering services at a home health care agency would also need to get fingerprinted at a fingerprinting center.
What is home health care?
Home health care includes a varied range of health care services that can be provided in your home when you’re ill or injured. Home health care is generally less expensive, more convenient, and more effective than care provided in a hospital or nursing facility.
Examples of skilled home health services include:
- Wound care for pressure ulcers or a surgical wound
- Patient and caregiver education
- Intravenous or nutritional therapy
- Injections
- Monitoring of severe illness and unstable health conditions
Generally, the goal of home health care is to treat a disease or injury. Home health care helps you:
- Get healthy
- Regain your independence
- Become as independent as possible
- Maintain your existing condition or level of function
- Slow down the deterioration
What are the different types of home health care services?
The scope of care services a patient can obtain at home is unlimited. Depending on the patient’s individual situation, care can range from nursing to specialized medical services, such as laboratory testing. You and your healthcare provider will determine your care plan and the services you need at home. Home care may include the following services:
Doctor care:
A healthcare professional may visit a patient at home to analyze and treat the conditions. They may also periodically review the need for home health care.
Nursing care:
The most familiar form of home health care is nursing care, depending on the person’s needs. In consultation with the physician, a nurse establishes a plan of care. Care may include wound care, ostomy care, intravenous therapy, administration of medications, monitoring of the patient’s general health, pain control, and other health support.
Physical, occupational, and/or speech therapy:
Some patients need help relearning how to do everyday tasks or improve their speech after an illness or injury. A physical therapist can set up a treatment plan to help patients regain or strengthen their muscles and joints. An occupational therapist can help patients with physical, developmental, social, or emotional disabilities relearn everyday tasks like eating, bathing, dressing, and more. A speech therapist can help patients with language disorders communicate clearly again.
Medical social services:
Medical social workers provide various services to patients, such as counseling and locating resources in the community to help patients recover. Some social workers are also the patient’s case managers – when the patient’s health condition is very complex and requires coordination of many services.
Care from home health aides:
Nursing assistants or home health aides may help the patient with essential personal needs, like getting out of bed, bathing, walking, and dressing. In addition, some aides have received special training to help with more specialized care tasks under the supervision of a nurse.
Homemaker or basic assistance care:
While a patient is receiving medical care at home, a housekeeper or a person who helps with housework can maintain the household by preparing meals, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, and doing other housekeeping activities.
