How To: Determine If Your Loved One Needs Medical or Non-medical Health Care

We often confuse the two terms. Sometimes we think that medical and non-medical health care are similar in all aspects. They both provide care and treatment for the senior and the sickly but they vary as to the degree of care they provide. For most non-medical home health care providers, they limit their services as to personal grooming and light housekeeping. Medical home health care, on the other hand, focuses on the technical aspect of senior care.

The difference between these two types of care is in the type of services they provide as well as to the kind of caregiver who attends to the needs of the patients. For years now, only one name stands out when we talk about in-home care in Newton, MA, it is the 24 Hours Care. We specialize in both medical and non-medical home care.

Hence, we can explain to you thoroughly the difference between these two terms. Generally, we can distinguish them through these categories.

Types of Services

Essentially, non-medical health care caters to the basic needs of the seniors. The services offered can range from providing companionship to assisting in their personal needs. Some caregivers may also have to do light housekeeping like washing clothes or even cleaning the house since it will be very taxing for our seniors to do it themselves.

Another important task of caregivers in non-medical home health care is that they can provide mobility assistance in case there are scheduled appointments with the doctor or there are family affairs. Moreover, reminding seniors of their medication is also part of the job.

Whereas, for medical health care, they are more complex in nature. Usually, the kind of caregivers assigned to seniors is healthcare professionals. When you get medical health care, it is a given that patients have health problems. Some of these health problems may be due to aging or to some complications in their system.

Hence, with this kind of condition, we must get a skilled nurse or a therapist who can monitor their progress as well. These patients need a special kind of care. They might need assistance in their treatment process or there are some machines that need to be attached to them for their medication.

Who provides senior care?

As what we have already mentioned in the previous paragraph, seniors who are under medical home health care, are catered by healthcare professionals. These are skilled nurses, therapists, and medical social workers. Their primary goal is to keep the senior patient comfortable during the whole recovery process.

Their tasks include wound care, pain management, and administering treatment procedures based on the doctor’s advice. When the patient is living with severe health conditions, like Alzheimer’s disease or cancer, healthcare providers may have to assign expert caregivers in this field.

For non-medical care, since they only cater to the basic needs of the seniors, they need to be skilled and trained for such job. Since it is normal for us to take good care of the sick, we just need to study deeper as to how to deal with senior patients and the right approaches to basic caregiving.

These are the most notable differences between the two types of healthcare services. Now, you have to determine which type of care suits best for your seniors.

For more queries and assistance, you can know more about our home health care services at 24 Hours Care. You can contact us at www.24hourscare.com or call us at 617-792-0500.