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Our Vision

HomeHealthCaring (HHC) is a forum for helping families that provide care to their loved ones at home and make important everyday decisions around treatment options, patient safety, and even end of life planning with enormous faith, hope, love, and even luck! We want to honor and humanize your patient stories and caregiving experiences. We invite you to join the conversation, read about best practices in home healthcare, access our resources, engage with and learn from each other.

Why HHC?

There is an overload of online information on home healthcare but it is siloed, fragmented, oftentimes outdated. Most sites focus on specific areas like dementia or diabetes management. However, patients suffer from various ailments with ever-changing symptoms and support needs. 40 million Americans currently live with a cognitive, hearing, mobility, vision, or independent living disability and rely primarily on their family for daily living activities, medication management, and even financial support. These individuals are also prone to smoking, obesity, heart disease and diabetes, which magnifies the complexity of care coordination. Last year, 6.8 million people used mobility aids including wheelchairs, scooters, and walkers, and 6.5 million seniors over 65 were suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which are two leading indicators of needing extended care.

Elderly Holding Hands

Most family caregivers have little to no prior knowledge or training in dementia, cancer, chronic ailments, pain management, or hospice care. They struggle to navigate the complex healthcare system and coordinate between physicians, specialists, medical equipment suppliers, social workers, therapists, aides, insurance, and benefits administrators. They make buying decisions about expensive medical equipment, without knowing how the patient’s needs may change or if insurance will cover the costs. As a friend recently said “caring and care coordination needs full-time project management”. It is difficult and time-consuming to search online to find reliable sources or actionable information for a specific issue at hand. Physicians and nurses do not have the bandwidth nor can advise on unique considerations, like what type of wheelchair ramp may be suitable for a patient’s home or medical bed assembly instructions.

We do not aspire to become a one stop shop with all the answers, but over time we hope to provide a landing place for caregivers to navigate from and make informed choices. We aim to listen and learn as much as we seek to share. We do not endorse products, brands, or prescribe medical services. We believe that sharing useful information and enabling support networks will empower caregivers to discuss treatment options with the clinicians, make better purchase decisions, improve patient quality of life, reduce falls, accidents and readmissions, and alleviate the overall burden on our healthcare system. It makes good economic sense too.

Investors see global home healthcare as a $362 billion market opportunity and expect it to double in the next 5-7 years. Home healthcare is estimated to be 30% cheaper relative to acute or long-term care facilities. Large health systems are investing in “Hospital at Home” programs, in part to address labor shortages. The family caregiver becomes the critical constituent and patient advocate in this new value chain. Per AARP, In 2021, an estimated 38 million unpaid caregivers provided a total of 36 billion hours of care, conservatively estimating $600 billion in economic value. These statistics don’t account for the toll on caregivers. There is an immeasurable cost of physical and emotional burnout as well as financial and career sacrifices. Family caregiver challenges need to be heard and addressed. They need to shape our policies and drive innovation in home healthcare products and services.

Jigsaw Puzzle

Lastly, if you are a physician, long term or hospice nurse, healthcare social worker, physical therapist, mental health counselor, medical device provider, or a home healthcare expert, we invite you to become a volunteer contributor and share your knowledge. Let’s start this journey together!

HHC Team

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