Saving Your Loved One’s Independence

Posted on: 26 April 2018

There are many patients that will find that they can benefit from utilizing in-home care services to meet their basic healthcare needs. While these services can be extremely useful, there are some steps that should be taken to prepare for using these services.

Consult With Your Insurance Provider

One of the first steps that you should take before deciding on using an in-home care service is to contact your insurance provider. The costs of these services can be rather high, but most health insurance will provide coverage for in-home services. However, there are very likely steps and requirements that will have to be met in order for the insurance to cover the in-home service. An example will be that many insurance providers will require an official referral from the patient's doctor before approving coverage for these services. By contacting your insurance agent, you will be able to confirm these requirements before you start the process of filing this claim.

Provide The Care Service With Applicable Medical Records And Instructions

Before signing up for one of these services, you should have the primary doctor prepare written instructions detailing the care needs of the patient along with a synopsis of the patient's condition. This information will be important for ensuring that caregiver understands the patient's needs while also helping the service to assign the correct personnel to the client. While getting this document may require an additional trip to the doctor, it can be worth the inconvenience of ensuring that the patient's healthcare needs are being met.

Ease Elderly Patients Into Using These Services

It is common for in-home elder care services to be used by elderly patients. However, these patients will often respond negatively to sudden change. If you have been providing this care for an elderly loved one, you may want to ease them into using these services. Over a week or two, you should start mixing in visits from these caretakers with your normal trips to care for the patient. This will give them a chance to acclimate to the new caregivers while still having you near to reassure them.

Using in home healthcare services can be invaluable for protecting a patient's quality of life while ensuring that they are getting the level of care that they need. By taking the time to prepare for the transition to using these services, patients will be better able to ensure that they are getting the best results from using these services.