For residents of New York, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx, home health care agencies can provide tailored and in-depth assistance for their loved ones. Services range from meal preparation to help with personal errands, but these tasks are merely the tip of the iceberg in explaining the many ways a home care provider can provide you with peace of mind and help keep your parent healthy and comfortable.
For Aging Parents: 10 Big Reasons to Consider Home Health Care Agencies in New York, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx
1. Someone Can Be There When You Cannot
Caring for an aging parent can turn your entire life upside down. You likely need to help them with daily chores, medications, and even self-care. But this doesn’t mean your other obligations can simply be ignored, and you certainly can’t split yourself in half.
Home health care professionals can be there when you cannot. Whether your parent lives in New York, Brooklyn, or Manhattan, a professional provider can take over when you’re needed elsewhere. And they can do so in a warm, competent way that invokes your trust. To illustrate, trained and qualified caregivers can assess safety risks, provide mobility assistance, and serve as an escort to appointments. In the meantime, you can tend to your own needs.
2. Help Maintain a Sense of Independence
Home health care supports activities of daily living (ADLs) and allows adults to maintain a strong quality of life, without removing them from the place that matters most. In other words, home care can reinforce a sense of independence and boost your parent’s self-confidence throughout the aging process.
Statistics from AARP show that 90% of seniors want to stay in their own homes as they age. This holds true even if the person needs ongoing health care and/or help with activities like grooming, bathing, and remembering medications. Qualified professionals can provide this day-to-day help and preserve your parent’s dignity. And you no longer have to worry about them being alone
3. Facilitate Care Coordination
What exactly does care coordination entail? It starts with deeply understanding your parent’s preferences and needs. We then craft a unique care plan that meets your family’s schedule. Throughout this time, we communicate with your parent’s entire team of healthcare providers. This diligence produces many benefits, including:
- Improved care provision
- Elimination of unnecessary appointments, procedures, and tests
- A constant stream of information for family members
4. Support with Diet and Nutrition
To make matters more complicated, adults age 65 and older who are also recently discharged from a hospital or nursing facility are likely to be nutritionally at-risk. And factors like illness, injury, and bed rest can contribute to the loss of lean body mass. Home care can combat nutritional deficits by providing patients with grocery shopping assistance and home-cooked meals.
5. Provide A Wider Social Circle
- Frequent positive moods
- Higher levels of physical activity
- Fewer negative feelings
Home health aides can become trusted companions for walks around Queens or The Bronx, or reading. They can also play board games, watch movies, and eat meals with your parent. Even accompanying your loved one on personal errands can help friendship blossom.
6. Manage Medications
Home health care agencies can help keep all medications, OTC meds, supplements, and vitamins in one location so they stay organized. They can also ensure medications are properly stored, pre-sort medications for the week, and develop an updated medications list for you, additional family members, and other care providers. A home care provider can even establish a medication reminder and tracking system and help plan ahead for prescription refills.
7. Assist with Light Household Chores
8. Improve Health Outcomes
Home health care can also cut back on acute hospitalizations, readmissions, and emergency department visits. Last but not least, home-based care helps alleviate stress and other challenges faced by all members of your parent’s care team.
9. Deliver Meaningful, One-on-One Support
10. Keep Your Options Open
Home care provides you and your parent with a choice. In most cases, it’s very difficult to leave a facility once a patient has moved in. Home care, on the other hand, keeps your options open.
You can choose to keep your parent where they’re most comfortable and maintain an active role in decisions about their health care as long as doing so makes sense. This means your loved one can continue receiving guests, inviting family members to stay overnight, and even accepting phone calls with no visiting hour restrictions. And, as we mentioned before, home care can delay or possibly even eliminate the need to move into a facility.
Today’s seniors are aging in a different way than just 40 or 50 years ago. People are living and staying mobile for longer, and home health care agencies can keep your parent safe, happy, and comfortable throughout the latter seasons of life. To learn more about our services, contact Parent Care today.
