For Professionals

As a healthcare provider, you know that your patients’ homes hold more than furniture—they hold their memories, their independence, their life. It is for that reason VNA Community Healthcare offers Life-at-Home Services: providing support and more than healthcare for patients in the comfort and security of their own homes.

Our Life-at-Home Services include:
• Homemaker Companion
• Safety at Home

• Geriatric Care Management
• Transportation
• Household Management

Homemaker Companion
Like you, we understand how important it is for our patients to be able to depend on someone to help keep the house in order, assist with cooking, run errands and remember medications. VNA Community Healthcare’s Homemaker Companions offer sensitive, respectful care to people with arthritis, fractures, dementia, and other conditions. We do everything we can to honor patients’ intentions to stay at home, whether they have recently returned home from the hospital, are dealing with a chronic condition, or just want to move around with independence.

Our Homemaker Companion services are offered through our affiliate Lifetime Solutions.  With your referral, a Lifetime Solutions representative will assess your patient’s situation and create a customized care plan. This care plan depends on the timing—from a couple of hours several days a week to 24-hour live-in care—and the type of services involved. Services can include:

• Homemaker Companion to help with cooking, cleaning, laundry, household chores and transportation, shopping and companionship
• Personal Care Assistant for bathing, dressing, walking, eating and medication reminders
• 24-Hour Care, including live-in services
• Assistance with transportation
• Geriatric care management
• Medication management

Safety at Home
With families and caregivers sometimes scattered across the state or even across the country, medical alert services are essential for your patients’ peace of mind.

As you know, falls are one of the most serious health risks among seniors. VNA Community Healthcare’s Safety at Home service allows patients and their families to feel more secure in their own homes.

With the Safety at Home medical alert service, patients wear a water-resistant emergency button around their neck or on a wristband. Pressing the button connects them to a Response Center, which is staffed by trained professionals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Response Center staff is trained to calmly ask questions and provide the appropriate response. They will contact personal responders—a neighbor or family members—and offer rapid communication with the local emergency dispatcher.

Patients also have the backup support of VNA Community Healthcare, which is available to answer questions, help resolve service problems, and also handle the billing.

Safety at Home Makes Sense for Your Patients if your patient…
• lives alone or with family who are away from home most of the day
• has a history of falls or has a medical condition that make falls more likely such as heart, inner ear or breathing problems
• wants a feeling of extra security or peace of mind at home

Geriatric Care Management
Often, it can be a challenge for caregivers to know where to go for help with an elderly family member. As a referring doctor, it can be a challenge for you as well.

VNA Community Healthcare acts as an advocate for your patients and their families by providing Geriatric Care Managers. We work with several experienced Geriatric Care Managers in the shoreline community who help caregivers create a plan of care for patients with the goal of keeping them as independent as possible.

With your referral, we recommend a manager who will fit with the family. The manager makes regular visits to the home, assessing changes in the healthcare and life-at-home needs of the patient. They can make recommendations about family dynamics, personal finances, hiring an elder law attorney, as well as resources available through Medicaid, insurance and community programs.

Geriatric Care Management Makes Sense to:
• provide extra support to families and caregivers
• coordinate caregiving efforts
• offer local assistance for long-distance caregivers

Transportation
One of the most important services necessary for our patients to remain independent is the ability to get around town—for doctors’ appointments or for errands. While there are a number of transportation options in shoreline towns, VNA Community Healthcare offers several alternatives.

Our door-to-door service, provided through Lifetime Solutions picks patients up and brings them to their destination. Homemakers are trained and insured to provide assistance with driving and helping patients getting to and from the car. Occasional transportation assistance is offered, but when patients are receiving ongoing treatment for physical problems, cancer or a heart condition, a regular schedule can also be set up.

Transportation Services Make Sense:
• if a patient is no longer driving on a temporary or permanent basis
• when appointments are outside the area covered by town resources
• when patients need assistance getting to and from the car

Household Management
With the goal of keeping our patients as independent as possible for as long as possible, VNA Community Healthcare offers Shoreline Helping Hands, which provides referrals to reliable and trusted businesses. This subscription-based service connects patients and their families with carefully selected local businesses who provide a variety of household services, including:

• home repairs and cleaning
• daily money management and financial planning
• homemaking and organizing services
• yard work
• transportation
• durable medical equipment
• complementary therapies
• geriatric care management

The Shoreline Helping Hands staff works closely with patients and family members to choose the most cost-effective business for their needs. These businesses have been thoroughly screened, which means they return phone calls, arrive when they promise, have no criminal record, have strong references and are covered by insurance.

Shoreline Helping Hands is offered through an annual paid subscription to make our services more convenient. A subscription offers personal support, security, and greater independence your patients and their families. Annual subscriptions are available for $1.90 per week, $99 for the first year; $50 per year renewal rate.