Home Health Care May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered

: Home Health Care May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered

For many decades, people have associated health care with going to a doctor, hospital, or some other medical facility. However, there was a time when health care was mostly administered in the home. Back in the days when America was being settled and many families were living out on the frontier, they had very few hospitals around. Most received home health care from a town doctor who would make house calls to patients, doing everything from delivering babies to caring for the elderly-all inside the home of the patient.

In recent years, home health care is making a comeback. Though the doctor making house calls is no longer commonplace, home care agencies are becoming more and more popular. There is a good reason why in home care is trending upward-it addresses 3 specific needs that hospitals and other medical facilities have a difficult time with:

1. Convenience: Being able to stay at home is the wish of most people with some kind of illness. But until recently, those who needed some kind of long term care had little choice but to have it administered in a medical facility. Today, they can simply hire a home health care agency and have it all done without having to leave their house.
2. Affordability: This is a big one. Hospital bills are higher than ever, and there is increasing pressure in busier hospitals that are overwhelmed with patients to get them out of there as quickly as possible. Today, it’s not unheard of for someone to stay in the hospital just a couple of weeks and rack up several thousand dollars in bills. Conversely, there is no cost for the patient to sleep at home in their own bed. This helps keep costs lower.
3. Better Quality Care: As mentioned in point #2, hospitals in many places are overly burdened these days, meaning the quality of care suffers. With most home health care agencies, a nursing professional is assigned to a specific patient, and administers 1 on 1 care for as long as needed. For this reason, the level of quality with in home care is normally much higher.