Aging in Place: Understanding Home Health, with Daphne Davis

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following podcast is provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. And welcome everyone back to answers for elders radio and we are here on our final segment of our hour with Daphne Davis talking about making the transition. How do you assess mom and dad for you know, the next step, and there should be we’ve talked a lot about number one words you say. Next situation was just the whole bucket list, the difference in the quality of life and how you can kind of assess when if you’re surviving or if you’re truly living, and I think that’s a really important thing. And then we just talked last segment a little bit about home care and about how to receive homecare, how to have the conversation. And now there’s a whole other step of care that I’m really glad, Daphne, you’re talking about, which is home health. And a lot of times, I know that home health is brought in usually if mom or dad have had, you know, a stroke or surgery or something like that, and it is like a temporary service. But I think it’s important, definite that you share with our listeners today a little bit about what does home health do and what is their role in selecting a good home health company? Right now, this could be a very confusing topic. Excuse me for all of our listeners out here. Doctors and nurses even get this confused? So in home care and home health are not the same. Now, in home care does not require a prescription or an order from a doctor. Home Health does. Home Health also does not give you what we call custodial care, right, so it’s not going to clean your home, make meals. It’s not going to do that. Now, home health is about getting services after you’ve had usually some kind of rehab stay. You had to recover a little bit from pneumonia, you had surgery, you had a hospital stay of some story, yea, and so that’s where we can have the services and it this falls more under a medical and umbrella, because Medicare does pay for this, but it’s usually under needing a home health nurse for something. Maybe some wound care, right, maybe you have a catheter and that’s new for you. Maybe it’s something in terms of physical therapy, and you can have a physical therapist come into your firm, occupy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. If your if your swallow mechanism is is needing to be enhanced and work those muscles, speech therapy can come into your hand. So this is more of a medical focus this it does not take the place of hands on care. So I want that to be really clear. This is not hands on care when you’re talking about home health, right, in home care provides hands on help. Now these are broad brushes, right. There’s probably exceptions to what I’m saying, but generally that’s that’s how it works. In home care is not paid for by your medicare insurance. Home Health is paid for by your medicare insurance. So two big distinctions there. The conversation that I run into most often is when someone has had a surgery. They’ve either had a broken bone, knee replacement, some something going on that they had to have a surgery and usually the person who’s had that surgery is pretty determined to go home. Hmm, this is a nice stop gap to having some more support in using home health. I believe everyone should use their home health service. Absolutely a company if you’re going to use home health services in your home accompanied with in home care, right. So those two kind of go together in your home. The big discussion is usually do we have home health in their home or do we consider having a respite stay? MMM, while there’s convalescing and getting stronger and not landing back in the hospital because they’ve pushed themselves? That can happen in assisted living, that can happen in adult family homes, right, and that’s everywhere from one to to thirty days. Basically, it’s a respite day. It’s a nice fit for someone who does have true possibilities of getting home and being successful at home again. It’s also a nice way of having a stepping stone when someone needs to embrace the idea of, oh my gosh, I fell. Worst case scenario, I broke my hip. I know we say that like a Cliche, but it happens. I broke my hip and my life has been turned upside down in the last four weeks. Yeah, and it’s hard to embrace how much your life has turned upside down. And so sometimes that respite stay can also be a bridge of embracing the new place in our lives. And you do that with absolute respect, you do it with dignity and you do it, like we’ve talked about in past, segments, involving your parents in the process actly exactly what will happen, as you’ll get less push back. HMM. It will also be a nice way of taking away some of the fear of the unknown, and it’s that’s when I believe you need a pinnacle senior placements to help you know what is the best respite fit in terms of if it possibly will become long term. So home how health fits in there very nicely. Home Health can go into adult family homes, memory care, assisted living, independent living. It can go wherever that person is living. It could go in your home. Lets say you know you’re wintering in Arizona and you say mom, come down with me. It can go to your home if your mom, you know is going to be living with you now the daughter or son. So it’s got a lot of flexibility, but it’s also a really good way to help people not take risks well, and I I happen to know as well. The Nice thing is is if you are under the care of a doctor, you don’t have to have a hospital stay to get hold no help. You could call your doctor and say I fell in, sprained my ankle and I now I’m getting better. I need some help with physical therapy and and your doctor can prescribe home health. Medicare will pay for it and you can get well and in get yourself back just strong. You know where you were. So a lot of time seniors won’t take care of that. And if they don’t care take care of that broken bone or or that sprained ankle, that ankle becomes weak and guess what, they become a higher fall risk. Absolutely. So one of the things that I really want to emphasize with home health is take advantage of it. There is really no downsize to having a you know, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, anything like that if you’re starting to feel that way. Also, if your chair walking, like we talked about earlier, you might need some strength conditioning and strength tape training. Medicare will pay for that. That’s right. They will pay for it to come into your home if your homebound. So if I broke your ankle and you can’t drive to the PT then they’ll come to you. If it’s that you need core strength, you had numberonia and you just are wiped out, they’ll say can you drive to the PT place down the street? But but cannuber the less you get it, yes, make use of it. You’ve been paying for your insurance. Use It. Yes. So and so we are talking again to Daphne Davis from Pinnacle senior placements and as we start to wrap up this wonderful hour that I’ve had with you, just fill us in again. How does pinnacle fit into all these pieces? Deaf? So I like to think of us as kind of the hub cub of the wheel that, because of my twenty years of experience and pinnacles commitment to doing the right thing for the right reason every time, we’re here to have information in all areas of this process right today you’ve heard me talk about Medicare, you’ve heard me talk about in home care. We haven’t talked about finances very much today, but that’s certainly something that I can help with in terms of budgeting and knowing the options. But our primary role is to be handson. We are not Internet based. I am not based on texting and phone calls only. We are facetoface and one of the things that I share with families up front is that at some point I will need to meet your loved one. MMM, because nobody is a piece of paper in a list of symptoms, and so every single person is different. Absolutely. There’s no cookie cutter for anybody. Makes me a little bit nervous about, you know, going to the Internet and saying I want assisted living and then you go and look at it and you’re like, well, I think mom can do this, but you don’t really know if they can do two person transfers. If your mom is a high fall risk, will she have to move again? You don’t really know if the personality of the building is introverted or extroverted. Do they stay in the room or are they really doing activities? So our role is to share that with you as objectively as we can. Our responsibility is to be in communities of care. Our responsibility is to know what the broad brush changes are in Medicare laws right? And so we are kind of that go to person and if I can answer your questions, twenty years has allowed me to meet a lot of people exactly, so I would probably know someone who can help you. Well, and you’ve had experiences with all kinds of scenarios. Yes, is it like your first Rodeo? No, so it’s like you know. I mean, as much as we know that everybody’s unique, the parallels are pretty much consistent with a lot of different scenarios that somebody like Daphne is very familiar with. So if maybe mom or dad or you know, they’re more quiet, they would don’t want to be in a big, busy community, Daphne will know not only how to find that right community, but she’ll be she’s a person on the street that knows the recent state surveys. She knows what their staff is like, she knows what their turnover is like where, you know, I always think about when I first started. I went on to a infamous Internet site and I put information in and about twenty minutes later I get a phone call from somebody that’s a salesperson and next thing I know my phone’s blowing up with phone calls from everybody in the world wanting me to move to their community and come and see their community. And they didn’t take the time. Really, none of these communities took the time to ask me about my mom and if I my mom was going to be a good fit, because that’s not their model right and I think having somebody like a Daphnee make one phone call, that’s it. You’re not going to get brass by phone calls from a million different communities, because, guess what, Daphne’s going to be the one that’s going to help screen all of that. The second thing is is that Daphne’s going to take time to know your parents or know you as a senior. And what’s most important, and I think that’s the key with all it is by far it’s the most important thing, because my highest value as as a person who helps seniors is that you only move one time when you have conversation right now. Not’s not to say that sometimes we need to do a stepping stone. We talked about respite and things like that. Sure, but my personal goal is is that I try to educate my family’s and clients in a way that they can see enough of the bigger picture to make a good decision for themselves. Perfect and it’s not me making the decisions, it’s me listening well enough. It’s right team listening well enough to know what is important to you. So, Daphnitely, how do we reach you? Well, one of the ways is eight hundred, fifty five, seven, three, four fifteen hundred, that old fashioned phone, and then the other way is the new fashion website at Pinnacle Senior Placementscom. We’re so glad to have spent this hour with you. Thank you so much. You are so welcome. It’s my pleasure and it’s always a thrill to have to have you on the third week of every month so everybody knows if you want to talk to Daphne, if that’s when you do so now. Thank you. The preceding podcast was provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. To contact pinnacles senior placements, go to Pinnacle Senior Placementscom.