Home Health Care Keeps You Capable and In Control
If your health challenge makes it difficult to leave home, it’s natural to feel worried about how you’ll handle this new normal.
However, you may not realize that home health services were designed to provide comprehensive support for your needs during this time. You get skilled care and support that helps you stabilize and recover, while feeling safe, optimistic, and in charge of your own life.
Who Qualifies for Home Health Services?
Home health care is a physician-ordered, skilled medical care benefit delivered in your home. To qualify, your doctor must certify that you need skilled services from a nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, or medical social worker. You must also be considered homebound, meaning that leaving home regularly is difficult without significant help from another person, an assistive device, or special transportation.
Home health care services are commonly ordered after a hospitalization or surgery, following a new diagnosis, after a significant medication change, following a fall, or when a chronic condition like heart failure, COPD, or diabetes needs consistent care.
Skilled Care in the Comfort of Home
For someone managing a health challenge at home, the logistics of going to regular appointments can be exhausting or even painful. Transportation, waiting rooms, multiple appointments in a week, and the energy of getting there and back is something that most people want to avoid.
A home health care provider removes these barriers to getting the care you deserve. Your care team comes to you, so you have the freedom not to worry about what it will take to leave your home. A skilled nurse, therapist, or social worker focuses entirely on you during their visit and provides the care you need right in your own environment.
People tend to heal better at home. You may even find emotional relief. Although you may feel that you’re dependent on others because of your homebound status and health challenges, home health services can have the opposite effect. Instead of being tied to appointments, commutes, and schedules, you’re free to get the care you need on your terms.
The Relationship Between Home Health and Real Independence
Patients often share their fear of being too dependent because they can’t leave home easily and have to ask for too much help from others. However, home health care services are designed to make you feel freer as you manage your health challenge.
Here are three reasons why:
- Education is central to every home health care visit. Your nurse and therapists help you manage your condition effectively. You’ll learn what symptoms to look out for, practice exercises that can help you get stronger, and how to monitor your condition (including the use of certain equipment) so your health is something you’re on top of, instead of letting it overwhelm you.
- An excellent home health team like Phoenix doesn’t just put a list of instructions on your kitchen table. We always offer clear next steps and provide you with a real understanding of your individual care plan. You’ll feel like a participant in your own recovery, which builds you up, makes you feel stronger, and lessens the feeling of worry or helplessness that can come with needing care at home.
- Your family will worry less, too. When family members such as a spouse or adult children are informed and see you taking control of your recovery, there’s less anxiety about what will happen next. They’ll also feel grateful and relieved that there’s always someone to call when a question comes up. It is empowering for your family to know that there’s a plan and a team has your back.
Discover the Independence and Freedom From a Home Health Care Provider
Many patients feel completely dependent after a health crisis, surgery, or another event that leads their physician to recommend home health care services. This is understandable. However, home health care services exist to care for you at home, strengthen your ability to care for yourself, and leave you feeling more capable in your next phase of life.
You get the benefits of skilled care in your home, so that you’re more proactive and capable once your condition is stable. With the certainty that you have help when you need it and a newfound sense of responsibility for your condition, you may end up feeling stronger than you did before you received home health care.
Home health services should feel like an opportunity to take advantage of, so you can heal, recover, and experience a New Beginning. Ask for Phoenix by name when your doctor orders home health care, and we’ll handle the rest.
