As you set you to choose a good in-home care agency for your loved ones, you will face a problem of plenty. This is because the market is filled with home-care agencies that offer a range of services at attractive prices. When you look further, you will notice that all of them have been rated highly and have hundreds of testimonials on their sites. So, which is the right one for you? These are some simple things that you should keep in mind when choosing the right in-home care agency for the seniors in your family.
- Experience
Check on the experience of the home-care agencies near you and filter on the ones that have at least over a decade’s experience. Their years of standing in the home-care field speak volumes about their reputation and goodwill. It may suit you fine to try out newbies in other departments, but not in the in-home care sector. You need an experienced name to entrust the health of your loved ones to.
- Background checks
Now that you have at least 4 or 5 experience in-home care agencies in your locality, you have to move on to the next step of the iteration. It is the most important step called background verification. In this, you need to check if these agencies are duly authorized or licensed to operate in the locality and if they have their documents in place. Next, you have to study their history to know if they have been ethical in their business. If they have been accused of medical negligence, criminal act or other illegal acts in the past, you need to reject them right away. Never look back at the agency again regardless of how long ago the mistake was committed.
- Scope of services
Now, you have around 3 in-home care agencies that are not only experienced but ethical as well, in front of you. How do you choose the best among these? It is time for you to look at their scope of services. You don’t always require nursing or medical care services from an in-home care service provider. You might want other services such as therapy, companionship, health assistance, speech therapy, 24/7 services, etc. as well. Check for the range of services that these in-home care agencies offer you and choose the one that provides you the widest scope. You will be surprised to note that some agencies offer you extra services such as nutritional assistance, transport help, X-ray and help with laboratory reports, pharmaceutical assistance and so on.
- Breakdown of costs
When the in-home care service provider provides you a quote for the services offered, be sure to ask them for the breakdown of the cost as well. This is to ensure that there are no hidden costs. When the breakdown list mentions of ambiguous items such as “miscellaneous,” “others” or “sundry” or anything that means similar to these words, you should understand that you need to stay away from such an agency. Choose an agency that is transparent with its cost structure, and that is ready to provide you the full breakdown in writing.