Using Home Care for a Loved One - 15 Good Reasons
What is widely viewed as the best and most viable
delivery of health care in America? Infirmed and elderly individuals
have been found to prefer home care by 90 percent over comparable institutional
care.
What are some of the reasons for home care? This article
counts the ways:
1. Home care is delivered, as you would expect, at
home. Dorothy said it best: “There’s no place like home.”
Certainly, this is a statement that most people would wholeheartedly
agree with. There is nothing like the comfort and familiarity of being
cared for in the comfort and familiarity of one’s own home.
2. Home care helps keep families together. Compare
this to taking an elderly person away from their loved ones. At no time
is family more important than during times of illness.
3. Home care helps seniors maintain their independence.
Home care allows seniors to continue to live in the place they function
best – their home.
4. Home care prevents or puts off institutional life.
Living in a long-term care facility is unfamiliar and can often be intimidating.
Most people prefer postponing the inevitable as long as possible.
5. Home care helps promote healing. Medical evidence
shows that people recover more quickly at home.
6. Home care is safer. There is no secret that people
pick up infections and other complications when they live amid a chronically
ill population (such as in a hospital or long-term care facility). This
is obviously not the case when cared for at home.
7. Home care means personalized care. Care becomes
a one-to-one proposition in the home. You get this nowhere else.
8. Home care often gets the entire family involved
in providing care. Immediate and extended family members often take
an active role at different times of the day.
9. Home care reduces the stress that often accompanies
illness. Illness increases anxiety and stress, but it’s not nearly
as great when care is practiced in the home.
10. Home care is the most effective form of health
care delivered in terms of customer satisfaction. It all comes back
to the fact that people prefer to be at home.
11. Home care is delivered by a special group of people.
People don’t work in the home care industry for the money. They
do it for the emotional satisfaction of helping others and for making
a difference in the life of another.
12. Home care extends life. Studies by nursing schools
and government agencies have found that home care extends life. Visits
by home care personnel often provide spiritual as well as medical support.
13. Home care improves one’s quality of life.
For most people, the quality of their life is far better at home than
anywhere else.
14. Home care is less expensive than other forms of
care. The cost of home care is always less expensive than hospitalization
and almost always more affordable than nursing home or assisted living
care.
15. Technology will make home care even more desirable
in the future. Medical and technological advances will soon make it
possible to diagnose, monitor and treat illness at a distance. This
will help make home care even more of a preferred option.
Home care, unlike in the past, is no longer
a well-kept secret. There are, after all, at least 15 good reasons for
considering home care for a parent, spouse or other loved one. Please
call us today so we can assist you with your home care needs.