Making the decision to move into a facility and sell a home is an unalterable decision, once completed. It's important to know that there are options for aging independently at home with various models of in-home care. When deciding next steps for care, perform a complete assessment of medical conditions, support systems available, financial ability for care, and mental status. Freedom Home Care often works with families to provide a complete geriatric assessment with suggestions for care needs.

Types of In-home Care Providers:
Full Service Private Duty/Private Pay Agencies are usually "non-medical" services and can range from companionship, housekeeping, transportation, personal care, and dementia care to 24-hour or respite care. Full Service Private Duty Agencies provide non-medical care by employees of the agency who are screened, trained, monitored and usually bonded and insured. There is far more safety in this model, and far less potential liability for the care recipient than with a nursing registry.

Nursing Registries/Healthcare Registries act as "matchmaker" services, assigning workers to clients and patients who need home care. However, registries place the responsibilities of managing and supervising the worker on the patient, a family member, or a family advisor. Supervision, monitoring, government-mandated taxes, and workers’ compensation coverage usually fall on the consumer and oftentimes the workers are not trained.

Home Health Care is skilled nursing care that one receives at home for the treatment of an illness or injury. Examples are care for a wound (dressing changes); injections; monitoring of health conditions like diabetes, blood pressure or heart disease; assistance with medical equipment like dialysis; assistance with an indwelling catheter; assistance with a naso-gastric (NG) tube feeding or a ventilator. Services are often provided by Medicare-certified Home Health Agencies (HHAs). Home Health Care can also provide rehabilitation services including speech, physical and respiratory therapies.

Hospice Care is a special concept of care designed to provide comfort and support to patients and their families when a life-limiting illness no longer responds to cure-oriented treatments. Hospice is generally depicted as end-of-life care and can be in a home or a hospital setting, but it is usually required that someone be with the dying patient at all times. How a family accomplishes this is up to the individual and the family. Hospice entails a range of services from nurses and mental health professionals to spiritual advisors.

Medicaid Home and Community Based Care is intended to provide services for those who cannot afford to pay for care—and is designed with the goal of keeping the person out of a nursing home. Recipients do not need to be homebound or ill to receive the services. To access Medicaid services, the client must first be assessed by a state agency that gate-keeps the program and be approved for a specific number of home care hours or given a voucher for a certain amount of care.

For more information on our options for quality care at home, contact Freedom Home Care in Dothan, Alabama at 334-803-8078 or Opelika, Alabama at 334-745-7308. Freedom Home Care also has offices in Columbus, Georgia and Montgomery, Alabama.