Frequently Asked Questions About In-Home Senior Care

At Spokane Care To Stay Home, we offer a wide variety of senior-focused daily living and specialty care services, including:

• Personal care: Assistance with personal needs and hygiene, including bathing, grooming, brushing teeth, using the restroom, getting dressed, etc.
• Meal preparation: Planning, cooking and serving nutritious meals. This includes help with shopping for ingredients and addressing any special dietary needs.
• Companionship and transportation: Daily socializing, friendly support, rides to appointments, grocery shopping, etc. Our caregivers become friends with clients, treating them as they would their own loved ones.
• Parkinson’s care: Specialized, educated care for individuals living with the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
• Post-surgical and stroke recovery care: Temporary home care to assist with daily life and medical needs after undergoing a surgery or having a stroke.
• Alzheimer’s and dementia care: Specialized, educated care for those dealing with Alzheimer’s disease and/or dementia symptoms.
• Respite care: Temporary care for families seeking a break from providing support on their own.
• 24-hour care: Around-the-clock assistance for individuals who need professional supervision and/or access to care throughout the day and night.
• Transitional care: Specialized care that helps a person prepare and adjust when transitioning to or from a hospital or residential facility setting.

Our service area covers a variety of locations in and around the Spokane, WA area, including Coeur d’Alene, Spokane, Spokane Valley, Springdale, Country Homes, Medical Lake, Cheney, Chewelah, Colfax, Sprague, Harrington, Priest River, Harrison, Newport, and more.

If you aren’t sure whether your home or a loved one’s home falls within our service area, please don’t hesitate to contact us and inquire.

Yes! All of our caregivers are fully licensed, bonded and insured for the safest, most professional level of care possible. If anything should go wrong with your caregiver, you and your family will be protected from unnecessary losses.

In addition to making sure the necessary legal paperwork is in place, we also perform a thorough background check on every one of our caregivers. This includes checking their work history, professional certifications, criminal history, driving records, and social security information.

Home is usually the place where people feel the most comfortable. While residential facilities and clinical settings can be effective and beneficial, many people would rather continue living in the home they’ve built. This idea of living one’s golden years in the place and manner they’re used to is referred to as “aging in place.”

As more seniors choose to age in place, the community of care providers has worked to meet their needs. In-home senior care is a perfect compromise that allows people to accept professional assistance while retaining their personal independence and comfort. For many families, this has made it easier to find help for loved ones who might otherwise resist it.

There are a number of options for senior care, and it’s important to compare their benefits and find the one that suits you best.

At-home care offers many benefits for seniors and their loved ones, such as:

• Comfort and familiarity: Home is a familiar place where a person can feel comfortable and safe. This can be especially important for people with dementia and memory problems, as familiar places can help anchor them.
• Independence: Aging in place offers a sense of freedom and control that some facility settings can’t provide. In addition to getting to stay in their own home, individuals can work with their caregivers to make good decisions and direct their day.
• Better day-to-day functioning: Some things just require a little extra help. With the support of a caregiver, a person can achieve their goals and get proper care with less struggle.
• Social and emotional support: Human interaction is a powerful, natural need. When a patient has someone with them throughout the day, it helps fulfill those social needs and creates a genuine personal connection that can better support them.
• Skilled, professional healthcare: Professional in-home senior care delivers dedicated, one-on-one medical support from a trained home healthcare professional. Caregivers know how to recognize and address any medical issues, and they get to know the individual’s specific needs very clearly and intimately.
• Peace of mind: Knowing that a person will be properly cared for is an enormous relief for patients and their loved ones. Friends and family members can rest easy knowing that support is in place, and that they won’t have to shoulder it alone. If you work a full-time job and cannot care for your elderly loved one yourself, in-home care bridges the gap.

Yes! Although we primarily focus on caring for seniors in their own homes, we can also provide services for other living arrangements. If you have a loved one in an assisted living facility but would like for them to have additional assistance from a dedicated caregiver, we can help. This allows us to truly personalize their care, and it may even help take some pressure off of loved ones and facility staff.

Every care situation is unique, which is why we determine our rates through a process of evaluation. We meet with clients for an assessment to discuss their needs and expectations, then work to find the right caregiver. After evaluation, our care managers can discuss appropriate rates for your situation.

Another factor that can affect overall cost is the amount of care provided. We do like to make sure our caregivers are able to work at least part-time, so we typically set a minimum number of hours per week for care. This varies by situation, so we’ll work with you and your loved ones to find the right schedule and determine an appropriate number of hours per week.

Some insurance companies do cover in-home senior care services, but that coverage varies. You’ll want to speak to your insurance provider to check the specific policy in place and determine what its limits are.

Medicare may help but will only cover costs related to specific, medically necessary care, such as physical therapy. Non-medical elements of in-home senior care, like helping with general transportation and meal preparation, are considered not medically necessary, and therefore not qualified.

If you don’t have coverage from either insurance or Medicare, you may still be able to receive financial help from certain programs. If you’re interested, we can refer you to a service that can help you seek government aid and other types of assistance for in-home senior care.

In addition to connecting you to financial resources, our care managers can also help you explore your service options. They’ll examine your needs and will work with you to develop an appropriate care plan that fits your budget.

There is no need to worry about making payments directly to the caregiver, as we handle all transactions ourselves. Your caregiver will also never ask for direct payment, and doing so would be noncompliant with our rules.

When you choose to work with Spokane Care To Stay Home, our administrative staff will take care of all the logistical and management elements for you. This includes things like employee payroll, employee expenses, state and federal taxes, liability insurance, and workers’ compensation insurance.

At Spokane Care To Stay Home, each caregiver is hand-selected by our care management team to best suit your needs, schedule, and preferences. Our thorough employee screenings and client evaluation process ensure that you get both reliable, professional support and ample opportunity for input.

We do our very best to match the right caregiver to the right person based on what we’ve learned. However, if the person we select doesn’t seem like the right fit, we can revisit and look for a new one.

Our goal is to match each patient with a dedicated caregiver who can get to know them and their needs at a personal level. Of course, everyone occasionally needs backup. If a caregiver gets sick or additional help is needed to meet their schedule, the patient may be cared for by someone else. Ideally, however, we strive to keep care intimate rather than spreading information across several people.

We know how important it is to have a positive, trusting relationship with anyone who is close to you in potentially vulnerable situations. If at any time you are unhappy with the current caregiver, we’ll re-assess the situation and replace them with someone new. Our goal is not just to take care of you, but also to ensure that you’re satisfied and comfortable with your in-home senior care provider.

You should always be in control of who is and is not allowed to access your personal information, whether it’s test results or your health status overall. As we develop your personalized in-home senior care plan, we’ll discuss who is and is not allowed to handle different kinds of information. Any health data or documentation that you want to keep private will remain secure and anonymous to anyone who is not authorized to see it.

We run thorough background checks on all of our employees before hiring, ensuring that both our company and our clients can trust them with sensitive data and vulnerable situations. Our caregivers are safe, reliable professionals who will treat your personal information with the utmost respect and care.