November is National Home Care Month

Home health care is highly skilled and professional health care, but it provides so much more than what patients & families normally receive from our traditional health care system. Our professional staff meet patients and their caregivers in their home. There is an intimacy and connection that rarely occurs in other settings. Home health care seeks to support someone in maintaining their independence, achieve recovery, and/or optimal functioning from sudden or chronic disease. Home health care can also provide compassionate support for someone facing a life-threatening illness. It strives to alleviate fear and suffering, in whatever forms that may be, in order to free the patient and their loved ones to do the things they want or need to do during the time they have left. And we are there to provide support and assistance to patients and their caregivers.  If you or someone you love is facing a limited life expectancy or recovering from surgery, injury or illness, ask your physician about a home health referral. We will work with your physician to develop an individualized plan of care to promote optimal functioning and well-being.

Our country’s ability to maintain an effective health care delivery system will be decided on how we care for our venerable populations of Americans such as the aged, the chronically ill, the disabled and children. However, the increased health care demands from 77 million more retirees from the baby boom generation will soon come to fruition. How will we provide high quality long-term care to our parents and eventually for ourselves?  To manage cost and improve quality in an overstressed health delivery system we must initiate greater support for health care providers that fall outside the costly path of institutional care.

Home care presents as a viable solution to provide the highest quality care, while offering dignity, respect, and compassion. Despite massive cutbacks in government funding, home care continues to be the preferred means of receiving quality health care services for millions of Americans. More than just providing excellent care where and when patients need and want it, home care saves American tax payers and commercial health insurers billions of health care dollars each year.  There is no more cost-effective provider of health care in our country.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving and recall our many gifts, please remember the home care professionals, and the family caregivers who make a difference every day for our nation’s seniors, disabled, and infirm. Make some time to take care of the family caregiver. Ask them how they are doing. Listen without judgment, and let them talk about their frustrations. Help them find answers to their caregiving dilemmas, and find the support they need. Never let yourself forget that they have responsibilities, as well as hopes and dreams, outside their caregiving duties. With appropriate information and support, family caregivers can continue to help their loved ones across the lifespan.

Extend a warm thank you to all home health and hospice professional care providers who make a difference in the lives of the patients and family caregivers we serve.

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Kim Wilerson is the Administrator and Owner of Island Home Care , 817 Simonton Street, Key West, FL.