Micki and Sunny were wonderful in finding us a caregiver for my mom. They went out of their way to find the perfect person to help with my mom's care and to teach the family how to provide better care. Caregiver Connection is a referral agency for independent contractors who they have screened. They sent us Shannon who stepped right in at a critical time to help us get up to speed after we learned that most Hospice at home programs provide little actual care for your family member. After being given a very inaccurate impression by the hospice provider of just what hospice provides for those who elect to die at home, we were scrambling to find competent care. As hard as we were trying by ourselves, we in the family just couldn't provide good care in an efficient manner that didn't cause pain and maintained her dignity. We had no training from hospice and were totally lost knowing what to do when things got bad. Shannon immediately took charge and made my mother clean and comfortable. She evaluated what was needed for improving mom's situation and showed us how better to care for her when she wasn't there. We could not afford to hire 24 hour care, but we planned to have caregivers from Caregiver Connection there some of the time to do the difficult work, learning from them for when we were caring for my mom by ourselves. I just wish we had started with Caregiver Connection sooner. My mother's care suffered because we waited too long to get help. Hospice at home through Medicare Advantage provides far less care than we thought. My mom's Medicare Supplemental insurance company's hospice program gave us a totally wrong understanding of what they provided. Basically, we discovered that we were on our own as far as hour to hour care for mom was concerned. We were willing to provide round the clock care ourselves, but we quickly found that willingness was not enough. You need training to care for a dying person. We waited too long before starting with Caregiver Connection and I carry guilt and regret for not getting professional help from Caregiver Connection sooner. Having mom die at home as she wished was a nice idea, but without hiring professional help to supplement Hospice, it was totally unrealistic. If your family doesn't have extensive training and enough people for round the clock care, I feel that you need to hire professional caregivers or give up the idea of dying at home. Hospice as we experienced it did not provide for the care or maintain dignity for my mom, despite having 3 willing family members who put aside our lives to dedicate ourselves to mom. Additional professional help from Caregiver Connection was essential to beginning proper care. I just wish we had started with them sooner.
I hope this helps,
Lawrence
PS There may be hospice providers that are better than the one we used, but they mostly seem to provide just what is mandated by Medicare - very little actual care for those that choose to die at home. read more
