What do you know about home health care services? It’s worth taking a closer look when your dad is in the hospital after a surgery or hospitalization. Instead of your dad needing to spend days or weeks recovering in the hospital, he could go home and get the care that’s needed from home health care nurses.
Services Available Through Home Health Care
When your dad wants to go home but needs some medical care, home health care is essential. Instead of being in a sterile hospital room where noises and foot traffic continually interrupt his rest, he goes home to his bed or favorite recliner.
Nurses stop by to take his vitals, clean his wounds, run IV lines, or administer medications. If he needs physical therapy following surgery or a stroke, therapists come to his home to work with him. You avoid having to get him dressed, into your car, and in and out of the therapist’s office.
Home health care services can include visits from nutritional experts if your dad’s diet needs to change due to a stroke or heart attack. If he needs to learn how to control blood sugar levels due to diabetes, nurses can come to his home to teach him how to take care of himself.
With home health care, your dad has skilled medical professionals to help with everything. Your dad’s nurse can draw blood and send it to the lab for tests. He’ll have someone to help with feeding tubes. He even has home health care services for colostomies or catheters.
How Does It Work?
Suppose your dad fell and required surgery to repair his broken leg. He’s back home, but he needs help with wound care. Plus, his nurse needs to take his blood pressure and pulse and check his oxygen saturation levels each day.
At the scheduled time, the nurse will stop by his home, go through the daily care list, and report all results to his medical team. If issues arise, the nurse can work with the doctor on a new treatment plan or in a worst-case scenario call for transportation back to the hospital.
That new treatment plan may mean fluids due to dehydration. The nurse can run the IV line and administer the fluids. His nurse may work with the doctor to change your dad’s medications if they’re causing too many side effects.
His doctor may recommend that your dad works with a physical therapist in his home. If that’s the case, the person he’ll work with for physical therapy schedules a time to stop in and go through leg strengthening exercises with him.
After hospitalization for a serious health event or surgical procedure, arrange home health care. It gets your dad out of the hospital and back home faster. He’ll recover best when he’s in his bed and in a setting that is familiar and comforting. Contact a home health care agency to make the arrangements.