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Home healthcare enables the patient to remain in her/his home…and that’s usually where we’re most comfortable and secure. However, there may be times when in-home care simply isn’t practical, and all the facts and circumstances of a particular case need serious review. If Generations’ nurse concludes home care isn’t appropriate we will let you know right away.
To give you some ideas of when home care might be the better choice, here are some circumstances where it may make sense:
- The patient is likely to thrive in her/his home environment, as opposed to the alternatives.
- Where the patient is transitioning from a hospital or other facility, or recovering from surgery or an illness (to get help with a new baby, for example); in such cases the objective is to help the patient get back to independence and the ability to handle the usual activities of daily living.
- In instances where the patient may be isolated, and would benefit from personal care and companionship.
- Where the patient may have cognitive benefits from staying at home and as independent as possible.
- When the primary caregiver needs help and a respite.
- If there are safety issues, a lack of regular personal hygiene, poor nutrition, etc.
- If the patient needs reminders to take his/her medication.
- Where the patient doesn’t participate in activities that exercise her/him mentally and physically.
Generations uses a state-of-the-art telephone-based reporting system. When our CHHA arrives at your home she/he calls a special toll-free phone number from your phone. This call is registered in a special computer system. At the end of her/his shift the CHHA calls again. This does two things—it advises our office that your CHHA has arrived so we can respond immediately if something has happened to keep our CHHA from arriving on time, and it records the CHHAs' hours for billing purposes. This system uses the same technology as a 911 call, connecting the phone number called from and the client’s address. This ensures the CHHA actually calls from the client’s home.
We bill every 2 weeks on Friday. If you’d like, we can arrange for payment to be made automatically against your credit card. Otherwise payment is due within 14 days.
This type of care is not covered by most private insurance (although it may be under a long-term care policy), Medicare or Medicaid. Typically, the patient or a family member or other caregiver pays for the services delivered. Generations will review all financial arrangements and obligations in advance.
CHHAs are all employed by Generations. We provide all statutory coverage and benefits.
Under New Jersey law a CHHA may only work through a licensed health services agency, under the direction of a Registered Professional Nurse.
Beyond legal requirements, though, there are some practical reasons you should never use a “private” health aide or companion. While you will certainly pay less if you don’t comply with State and Federal requirements regarding payment of FICA and other statutory benefits, taxes and withholding, there are substantial risks for doing so, including possible civil and criminal penalties. Also if you don’t provide workers’ compensation and general liability insurance you may be personally liable for any injury to your home aide or others.
Generations also spends substantial time and money in qualifying its CHHAs; we do leading edge assessments (including integrity profiles), verify there’s no criminal record and do everything possible to ensure we are providing the most capable aides available.
Generations will designate a CHHA for each client based on our assessments.
To start with we will always try to match a client and a CHHA; for example, a reserved client may find an extroverted, talkative CHHA a problem. Our special pre-employment assessments enable us to make informed and objective decisions in deciding which CHHA might be the best fit for a particular client.
We ask that you trust our judgment and give your CHHA a fair trial.
Generations will replace any CHHA which the client feels less than comfortable with?
We will always try to keep the CHHA and client relationship. However, there may be circumstances where that is not possible. In such instances, we will find another match, whether temporarily or long-term.
Of course, many people are not immediately comfortable with a stranger being in the home regularly. We understand that. Every CHHA goes through a State certification process that includes a criminal background check. In addition, Generations does its own criminal and background check, as well as an integrity assessment as part of our personality profiling.
Nevertheless, there have been reported instances of clients claiming a home aide took property. In many instances such reports are caused by misplaced items or a lapse in memory rather than theft. We always urge clients to remove valuables to a safe place and to ensure personal items are kept secure at all times. The safest way to avoid misunderstandings is to ensure the circumstances giving rise to them never exist.
The CHHA will assist a client by reminding her/him to take self-adminsitered medication. A CHHA may NOT administer any medication, or organize medication into a pill organizer. We ask that the client, a family member or other caregiver provide that pill organizer in advance.
CHHAs are supervised by a Generations Registered Professional Nurse, who makes periodic follow-up visits after the initial assessment and plan of care is established. In addition management will periodically stop by the client’s home—as well as contacting the client’s family where appropriate--to ensure service is satisfactory. Of course, we also check-in with our CHHAs to ensure they’re comfortable and happy with their situation.
Generally every 6 months we do performance assessments with every CHHA, and input from our clients is a critical piece of that review process.
In spite of what you may read, almost no agencies are actually open and operating all the time. We have normal business hours, and you are free to stop by at any time. Outside of our normal business hours we are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have phone calls transferred to our On Call Manager—wherever we are--using state-of-the-art “voice over internet protocol” technology. While emergency situations are rare, they do happen, and we will be available when you need us to be.
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