Every activity that the modern home care agencies take should be primarily focused to the needs of the seniors. This should be done starting internally with their workforce so that they can extend more value-added services to the senior community.
Such a need is not only required in the patient care but also in several other allied aspects of home health care such as:
- Research and development
- Education and our scholarly efforts and
- Their engagement to reach out to the more vulnerable populations.
As an example, you can consider what this industry and all home health care agencies near me is doing through their internal LGBTQ committee. This committee is made up of people who are professional and experts in understanding the preferences and needs of the patient population.
The primary objective of these agencies is to continue to develop their service policies and procedures. They also educate their staff and involve the patients and their families. This helps them to provide the best services to the LGBTQ population.
Patient and family advisory council
The home care agencies now have a pool of patient and family advisory councils just as all other hospitals and clinics participating in providing home health care. This enables the patients as well as their family members to provide valuable inputs on different important things such as:
- Their service
- The diversity required
- The equity
- Inclusion and
- What they feel about the care institution itself.
All these feedbacks help the home care agencies to design their processes in the best way possible. Based on the feedbacks from the advisory council and focus groups, the health care industry has now made several reforms such as:
- In the way they designate information regarding the medical records of the next of kin
- Updating their website so that people can easily find their desired healthcare professionals quickly
- In the ways to understand the needs and preferences of the people and patient population and
- The opportunities sought out to sponsor and participate in different job fairs to serve the senior community in a much better way.
These processes will represent exactly what the patients and their families want. With the information and intel received by the home care agencies by listening to their patients, it becomes easy for them to make a difference in their service.
The design care process
There is also a change noticed in the home health care design process of the home care agencies. Once again, the patient needs, especially that of the senior patients, are taken into account while looking for the best ways to design these care processes.
- It is ideally now a ‘work in progress’ and not a ‘one size fits all’ approach. There is a special committee dedicated for this who are eager to listen to the patients and their families first and then go ahead with the designing process.
- It is their leadership in taking such initiatives forward that has helped in establishing a better communication with the patients and their families.
This approach in the design process has helped them to meet with the needs to do better improving their response to the need for inclusion in health care. With the best inclusion insights shared and followed all through the organization, chances of errors are minimized, if not eliminated entirely.
Operate as a team
Given this day and age and the demand for senior home health care, it is important for the home health care agencies to keep up with it with a continual supply of such care services.
- For this it is elementary that they have employees, care givers, trained nurses and other aides that will operate as a team. This will ensure better, faster and a continual supply of such care to the senior community.
- It is also required by the home care agencies to have the right mechanisms in place and the most appropriate home health care processes to provide.
In addition to the above, they must also incorporate their insights, training, feedbacks received and learnings in it for the broader organization to work better.
There are lots of health connection tools available that will allow the home care agencies and their teams inside the organization to collaborate and communicate. When they work together it will allow them to understand the unique requirements and more personalized needs of the senior patient population in a much better and more effective way.
Therefore, to ensure better home health care is provided it is required that the agencies interacts with different departments of the health care system at large. These departments include:
- Medical
- Dental
- Vision and
- Pharmacy.
Such a comprehensive interaction will enable the home health care agencies to design, organize and deliver their care to the senior patients. This will ensure that they get the targeted solutions designed just for their specific needs.
The progress related to seniors’ needs
The home care agencies now design specific programs and the progress of these are related to the needs of seniors.
You can cone across the most innovative ‘togetherness program for seniors’ that most of the home care agencies now offer in addition to their basic care services.
- This program or care helps the seniors to combat loneliness in the best possible way.
- This keeps them happy and motivated and therefore encouraged to live a happier and longer life.
Such type of approach has proven results to improve health outcomes. This is due to the more intentional performances of socialization.
According to a recent research and analysis it is seen that:
- The engagement rates of such programs especially designed for the senior population went up by more than 20% as compared to the previous years and
- The need for medical treatment for the patients declined significantly by 20% as compared to same time period.
With such inclusions in the home health care systems, it is now possible for the seniors to get health innovations and technology. This is the best way to engage the patients more and fully across the diverse variety of care with intent to improve the lives of the senior patients.