Mom lives alone in her home, with home care aides a couple times a week to take her shopping, etc. She takes one thyroid pill once a day, and a Valium twice a day. While she took her pills appropriately each day, she got confused about setting them up for the week, so her care aide would set them up each week in labeled pill boxes. This worked fine. Then the agency initiated a new process: only certain aides were allowed to do the setup, and the service would now be charged separately at $145 a week! Well, then the meds aide quit, so one of the “regular” aides has picked up the setup task. I asked if we could pay the regular aide for an extra hour to compensate for the extra task instead of the separate fee, and was told no. Is this common practice? Charging that much for fifteen minutes of putting a couple pills in the boxes? While it’s one of the regular aides doing it during a normal visit? Do NOT suggest a pill dispensing machine - that’s a non-starter for numerous reasons.
Mom is a difficult character, who despises everyone who visits, tries to help, etc. We’re on our third home care agency and who knows how many caregivers; the thought of screening and hiring yet another agency is daunting. But I guess I’ll be making some calls with my list of questions in hand, and am curious if this is normal or an outlier practice. Thanks, folks.
Why not hire privately if Mom only needs someone a couple of times a week. Some will work under the table. Do live too far away that you cannot fill the pill planner? They have them for a whole month. Then the aid just hands the pills from the case.
Why not a dispensing machine? I saw one in action years ago when I worked. I think you could put up to 10 days in. It tells the person time for their pills, they push a button and the pills come out in a little container. If the button is not pushed family is notified. If your Mom is not capable of understanding she needs to push the button and then take the pills, maybevshe needs more care than can be given at home.
If they have to employ someone that has gone through extra training (does not matter if it is on line, in house or a certificate program) there is expense to this.
Talk to the pharmacy there are some that will have the pills done in blister packs so that there is no need to sort meds.
And if you are an Amazon shopper Amazon offers this.
In theory you could hire someone to do this also.
My concern might be is your mom safe to be living alone. Yes she has people a few hours a few times a week but if her confusion is such that the pills confuse her what would happen if she left the water on, left the stove on, turned the oven on with yesterday's mail in side? Would she know to call 911 if there was a fire, would she know to leave the house?
With this level of confusion and inability to manage medications, is there any thought that simple in home care over this amount of time may be coming to a place where it is no longer safe, or are you feeling, all things considered that this is adequate for sure now and hopefully for some time. It comes to a point where anything might happen, but things happen in in-facility care as well. And wow, is the expense for medications, even just a few, THEN costly when added to the monthly fee.
If that is true, then the aids doing the meds , have to have higher education, which would be the added cost.
No clue if I'm right, it's a thought, and definitely doesn't make it right