A Few Signs That You're Choosing the Right Home Care Agency

Choosing a home care agency for an aging or sickly relative or friend, or for yourself, can be difficult. You want to ensure that someone you love is getting the best care possible while still at home and avoid any possibilities of neglect or even outright abuse. Since a home care agency is so important for your relative or for yourself, how can you ensure you're making the right choice? Note a few factors to consider that may tell you that you've found a good agency.

A patient's bill of rights

A good agency will have some sort of patient's bill of rights, or a written outline of how they care for their patients. This might include a patient's right to privacy and to being cared for delicately, and the responsibilities of a home care provider, including their responsibility to respect a patient's private space in the home, their needs for care on a certain schedule, and so on. If this type of bill of rights is written out, this can tell you that the patient is going to be cared for much more readily than by an agency who may not take the time to actually outline these rights and responsibilities and review them with their home care providers.

Nurses and trained therapists

Some home care may not require the work of an actual nurse; you may simply need someone to administer medication, turn a bedridden patient, assist with time in the bathroom and hygiene, and the like. However, an agency that has an actual nurse or therapist at least evaluate the patient for his or her needs is best. This will ensure that you know exactly what the patient needs and nothing is being overlooked when it comes to their actual medical needs and that a home care provider is more than just a housekeeper.

Recordkeeping

A good home care agency will have recordkeeping methods in place that they share with the family of the patient as requested, and on a regular basis. It shouldn't be up to each home care provider to take scattered notes about medications they administered or how they cared for the patient, as their care can greatly affect the patient's overall wellbeing. This recordkeeping should be directed by the home care agency themselves and it should be detailed, and also include instructions to each home care individual about what they need to do to keep those records and ensure they are accurate.

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