Home health care is provided at your home due to illness or injuries. Home health care includes a board care given by medical professional including skilled nurses, physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, social workers and home health aides. The goal of home health care is to improve your health at your home and to help you to become independent living at your home instead of hospitals or other rehabilitation facilities.
How often is it covered?
Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) and/or Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) cover eligible home health services like these:
Part-time or “intermittent” skilled nursing care
Physical therapy
Occupational therapy
Speech-language pathology services
Medical social services
Part-time or intermittent home health aide services (personal hands-on care)
Usually, a home health care agency coordinates the services your doctor orders for you.
Who is eligible for Home Health Care?
All people with Medicare Part A and/or Part B who meet all of these conditions are covered:
You must be under the care of a doctor, and you must be getting services under a plan of care created and reviewed regularly by a doctor.
You must need, and a doctor must certify that you need, one or more of these:
Intermittent skilled nursing care (other than drawing blood)
Physical therapy, speech-language pathology, or continued occupational therapy services. These services are covered only when the services are specific, safe and an effective treatment for your condition. The amount, frequency and time period of the services needs to be reasonable, and they need to be complex or only qualified therapists can do them safely and effectively. To be eligible, either: 1) your condition must be expected to improve in a reasonable and generally predictable period of time, or 2) you need a skilled therapist to safely and effectively make a maintenance program for your condition, or 3) you need a skilled therapist to safely and effectively do maintenance therapy for your condition. The home health agency caring for you is approved by Medicare (Medicare certified).
You must be homebound, and a doctor must certify that you’re homebound.
What is the difference between Home Health Care, Hospice Care, Long Term Care & Personal Care?
Home Health Care provides clinical treatment for intermittence care (short term), with a goal to help you to regain your independence.
Long Term Care refers to continuum (long term) medical and social services when you lost your abilities to perform your activities of daily living (ADLs).
Hospice Care often refers to comfort care. When you are at the final phase of terminal illness, hospice agency will focus on comfort and quality of your life rather than cure.
Personal care is non-medical care. The goal is to support you with cleaning, toileting, dressing, transporting, or your normal activities of daily living to help you to remain independent at your home.
