Home Health Care Glossary
This glossary is to help our home health care community better understand the terms used in relation to care. Please book mark this page for future reference or download our printable version HERE.
| Habilitation | Habilitation is a BAYADA Home Health Care specialty practice. It is the education, support, and assistance to enable clients with intellectual or developmental disabilities to acquire, maintain, and improve skills related to activities of daily living in order to function as meaningfully and independently as possible in the community. These services are provided by habilitation technicians, habilitation managers, and clinical managers. |
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| Health care power of attorney | Someone designated to represent a client or patient and decide on a plan of care when the client or patient is incapable or unable to do so themselves. |
| Health insurance exchange | This is a set of government-regulated and standardized health care plans in the US from which individuals may purchase health insurance eligible for federal subsidies. All exchanges must be fully certified and operational by January 1, 2014 under federal law. |
| Homebound | Being homebound refers to the state of when a person's physical health prevents him or her from leaving the home for more than short periods of time. To be eligible for home health care services through Medicare, the patient must be homebound or deemed in a homebound status. |
| Home health | Home health refers to short-term nursing, rehabilitative, therapeutic, and assistive home health care services. These services are provided to adults and seniors who are recovering after a hospital or facility stay or need additional support to remain safely at home and avoid unnecessary hospitalization. Through the Medicare Home Health benefit, a limited amount of up-to-one-hour visits are provided by registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, home health aides, and medical social workers. Click here for more information on home health |
| Home Health Aide (HHA) | A HHA is a nurse aide who has been tested and proven competent in home health skills. Home Health Aides are able to work in the private home. |
| Home health aide services | HHA services are part time or intermittent services to help with activities of daily living. |
| Home health care | Medical or non-medical services that safely support people in the comfort of home. |
| Home infusion | The in home administration of essential nutrients, fluids, electrolytes, medication, blood, or blood products directly to the blood stream. This includes but is not limited to specific therapies such as antibiotics, diuretics, pain control medications, or chemotherapy. |
| Homemaker service | A person who performs general household duties such as cooking, cleaning, child care, and shopping for a client unable to perform these tasks themselves. A homemaker is not a trained provider of personal care. |
| Hospice | A BAYADA Home Health Care specialty practice, hospice is comprehensive end-of-life medical, social, emotional, and spiritual care that provides comfort and support to patients and their family members when a life-expectancy prognosis of six months or less has been determined. These services are provided by nurses, physicians, therapists, social workers, home health aides, other professionals, and volunteers. Click here for more information |
