OCCK adds home health services

March 14--For an elderly or handicap person, sometimes the difference between staying in their home and having to move into a care facility is as simple as having someone come in and tend to a need once a day or once a week.

To help people be able to stay in their homes, OCCK has added home health to its menu of services after being accredited in December.

"It had been a dream of our leaders -- our CEO and our vice president -- for several years now," said Home Health Administrator Stephanie Gehring, RN. "They talked about it and put it on the back burner; and talked about it and put it on the back burner."

When Medicaid funding started plummeting, they decided to take the talk off the back burner and light a fire under it. From their dream, In My Home was developed to serve homecare and home health needs.

OCCK, a non-profit organization, serves nine counties including Dickinson. Gehring said they have definitely seen the need, especially in the rural and "frontier" counties, for home health and homecare. She defined frontier counties as areas like Washington County, which is more desolate than rural counties. The isolation makes offering the services less profitable for for-profit agencies.

"There is so much expense associated with those areas, you're sending your nurses or your physical therapist out to be on the road so much," she said.

When one employee's day is spent almost entirely on just one or two clients, many for-profit agencies decline to offer the services at all.

The first component of the new In My Home services was homecare, which started about a year and a half ago.

"On the homecare side we offer assistance with bathing, homemaking assistance lawn care, gutter cleaning, companionship services -- non skilled services," Gehring said. "It's our state-licensed side, we take Medicaid waiver insurance, we also take private pay, and long-term care insurance."

The home health side of In My Home accepts Medicare participants, Medicaid and private insurance, including Tri-Care, which is available to the military retiree.

"On the home health side we do the field nursing, the physical therapy, occupational therapy; we have a home health aide, medical and social worker, and speech therapist," she said.

"The difference on homecare and home health is that on the homecare side people do not have to be homebound -- there doesn't need to be any kind of doctor's orders," she said. "It can simply be someone calling in and saying 'mom and dad need someone to come in and help with cleaning; or dad has a little bit of dementia, we need someone to sit with him while mom is out for a while.'"

The home health side is for people with a skilled need. For example, if they have a complicated wound, onset of a new medical diagnosis or any issue causing them to be homebound.

By homebound, Gehring is referring to individuals for whom it takes "a taxing effort" to get out and about.

"It doesn't mean they have to be in their home 24/7," she said.

They can go to medical appointments, church, the hair salon and such. But, it takes effort. Usually they have to have someone drive them and mobility is difficult.

With the aging population of Kansas, OCCK sees a growing need for the type of services In My Home offers.

"I feel like there is an abundance of need for people to stay in their home, out of institutions, out of the hospital, out of skilled nursing facilities," Gehring said. "Mom or dad is going to want to stay in the comfort of their own home. If it is safe for them, keeping them in their own home is the main priority."

To learn more about In My Home, visit http://www.occk.com//InMyHome/ or call (785) 823-2025.

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