13 Types of Home Healthcare Agencies

Home Healthcare Agencies – Overview

Home healthcare agencies offer professional support services enabling individuals of various dependency levels to live safely at home. This at-home service helps the aging and disabled who need assistance to live independently. These services support individuals managing chronic health issues, recovering from medical setbacks, or living with special needs or disabilities.

Home healthcare agencies employ a multidisciplinary team of caregivers, including nurses, therapists, aides, and social workers, to provide care tailored to the individual’s short-term or long-term needs at home.

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In-Home Healthcare Services

Home healthcare agencies can help you achieve the highest quality of life possible. These services can ensure security, safety and better independence. They can also help manage ongoing medical conditions.

This approach can reduce the need for extended hospital stays. These professional services are designed to aid in recovery after a severe illness or prolonged hospital stay, all in the comfort and familiarity of your home.

Overall, home healthcare agencies offer the following:

Companionship
Assistance with safely managing tasks around the house
Help with daily activities (bathing, dressing, etc.)
Short-term or long-term nursing care after a disease, an illness or a disability
Ventilator care

Different Types of Home Healthcare Services

Types of Home Healthcare Services

The range of home healthcare services a patient can receive is extensive and adaptable to their specific needs. These can range from conventional nursing care to recovery from an illness or post-surgery to specialized medical services, such as laboratory work.

The home healthcare service a patient needs depends on their situation. So, you can consult with your doctor and decide the type of home healthcare plan and services you may need at home.

These are some of the most common types of services offered by home healthcare agencies:

1. Doctor Care

An ideal home healthcare agency will provide a doctor to visit you at home to diagnose and treat any illnesses. The doctor can also be responsible for periodically reviewing the home healthcare needs and upgrading them if needed to ensure recovery in the shortest possible time.

2. Nursing Care

Nursing care is one of the most frequently utilized home healthcare services. After consulting with your doctor, a registered nurse (RN) is assigned to design a care plan. Nursing care services usually include ostemy care, wound dressing, medication administration, intravenous therapy, pain control, monitoring patients’ general health, and offering other health support.

3. Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapy

Some patients may need to re-learn how to perform daily activities or improve their speech following an injury or illness. A physical therapist from a home healthcare agency can put a plan together to help patients regain or strengthen the use of joints and muscles.

An occupational therapist teaches patients suffering from developmental, physical, or social and emotional disabilities to perform daily functions normally. A speech therapist helps patients with impaired speech regain their ability to communicate clearly.

4. Medical Social Services

Medical social workers provide various services, such as counseling patients and finding community resources to help them recover. Some social workers can also be a patient’s case manager if their medical condition is so complex that it requires coordination with multiple medical and healthcare services.

5. Health Aides

Home health aides help patients with their basic personal needs, such as getting out of bed, bathing, dressing and walking. Some health aides receive special training and certification to provide more specialized care under a registered nurse’s (RN) supervision. This may include feeding tube care, catheter care, monitoring vital signs, etc.

6. Basic Assistance Care

When a patient is cared for at home, a basic assistance care worker/homemaker helps them with tasks and chores to maintain their household. This service may include buying groceries, laundry, meal preparation and similar housekeeping activities.

This service also includes assistance with personal care tasks, such as bathing, dressing, and toileting. Patients are also helped with ambulation transfers, including bed-to-chair transfers, wheelchair-to-bed transfers, and fall prevention.

7. Volunteer Care

This type of service from home healthcare agencies involves volunteers from community organizations who provide basic comfort to the patient through emotional support, transport, personal care, and even paperwork.

8. Companionship Care

Companionship Care offered by home healthcare agencies is designed for patients who are alone and need a companion to provide comfort and supervision. At times, these companions may also perform common household chores. This may include assistance with meal planning, light housekeeping, medication reminders, errands and escorting to appointments.

9. Nutritional Support

In this type of home healthcare service, nutritionists and dieticians visit the patient and provide a dietary assessment. These professionals can guide and support the patient’s treatment plan for faster and more effective recovery and relief.

10. Laboratory Work

Some home healthcare agencies also offer to provide in-home blood and urine tests. Besides this, it can also involve using a portable X-ray machine to perform this service at the patient’s home.

11. Pharmaceutical Services

Home healthcare agencies can also deliver medicine and medical equipment to a patient’s home. If the patient needs to, the service also includes training the patient on how to take medicines or use the equipment, which may even include intravenous therapy.

12. Transportation

Home healthcare agencies provide comfortable transportation to patients who must go back and forth from a medical facility to their homes. This service is excellent when a patient frequently has to undergo tests or exams at a medical facility or visit the doctor.

13. Meals at Home

Meals-on-Wheels is a well-known service, often associated with home healthcare, providing delivered meals to those in need. Many communities offer this service to the elderly, disabled and patients who cannot cook at home. Under this, hot meals are delivered several times weekly to the patient’s home, depending on their needs.

Conclusion

Home healthcare agencies offer a plethora of in-home services. These are aimed at helping patients recover from illness, injury, or surgery. Home healthcare services also help patients become more independent and experience an improved quality of life.

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