Bethany Village Home Health Care provides health services to elderly patients recovering at home
While many have heard of Bethany Village, an independent and assisted living retirement community in Centerville, fewer have heard of the other ways Bethany Village serves the region. One such service is Bethany Village Home Health Care. We spoke with Dana Albaugh, director of Bethany Village Home Care and Wellness Services, to learn more about it and the way it’s helping seniors in the Miami Valley.
Dayton Magazine: What is Bethany Village Home Health Care?
Dana Albaugh: Home Health Care is your skilled services. It’s nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, social work and home health aids. Nurses can come out and assist with wound treatments, infusion services, people that have planned surgeries—things along those lines. We can get in there and help you with that treatment after your surgery or even before—assist with medications, we can help with modalities, activities of daily living, a lot of different functions when it comes to aging in place.
When I talk about aging in place, I take it back to the [idea of] it takes a village. It takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to raise a teenager, it takes a village to run a company. It also takes a village to help someone age in place. So that’s your Home Health Care aspect; working with the actual patient that’s going to be treated, but also with whomever the caregivers may be.
DM: When does Home Health Care get involved with patients?
DA: Home Health Care is generally an acute onset of something going on. There has to be a skilled reason that you need Home Health Care within the home. But something that sets us apart from other agencies is if there is that acute issue and we resolve it, but there’s an ailment that you can’t resolve, our social worker is amazing and she will get you set up with community resources that can continue this ongoing process. It might be Meals on Wheels, it might be the Area Agency on Aging and all the different entities we can bring in to try to assist and then also direct home care, which is your bathing and personal care needs. We partner with a lot of the home care agencies in the area.
DM: Who comprises the Bethany Village Home Health Care team and what do they do?
DA: One thing about all our team members is we are a very seasoned team. I would say we would have well over a hundred years of experience. We have a very seasoned team with the combination of nurses and therapists. Our nursing staff, we can provide medication management, a lot of education on disease process. We are doing infusion services, IV antibiotics, IV nutrition, wound treatments and specialty treatments.
Our physical therapists assist patients with strengthening and gait training. They come up with home exercise programs so our patients can do the exercises in their own environment. Occupational therapy will work on activities of daily living. It’s utilizing their space and their area to be able to do what they need.
We work very closely with all the hospitals in the area. Hospitals are a referral source for Home Health Care to make sure that the patients don’t go back into the hospital. We’re kind of the steppingstone coming out of the hospital to ensure that treatments continue to follow up. From there, we’ll contact their primary care provider. We work with neurologists, we work with oncologists, orthopedic specialists, gerontologists. Really any kind of specialist can get Home Health Care involved because if you’re in need of seeing a specialist, you’re also in need of having someone else having that extra set of eyes on you. We are the buffer between the hospital and your physicians and your family members.
DM: What sets Bethany Village Home Health Care apart from other senior health services?
DA: Bethany Village itself was voted Best of Dayton for our rehab and our independent and assisted living facilities. Our staff follow those same standards that our facility follows and ensure that patients have that continuity of care going all the way through the continuum. We’re a faith-based community and it shows in the care that we deliver to our patients.
DM: Why is this type of care becoming more popular?
DA: I think the need for the increase is a lot of people want to age in place now. Another thing is with insurance, … they want same day surgeries, they want fewer hospital stays, they want shortened time and nursing homes and things like that. They do have their cutoff days and from there patients still need services and the medical community sees that. [They’re] utilizing the home care services to make sure that the patient is still getting the [help they] need.
DM: When should someone start considering Home Health Care for themselves or a loved one?
DA: If they know that they have a planned surgery coming up, it’s always great to get home care initiated at that time. I know a lot of the surgeons and the physicians in the area, especially with the elderly population, already know about our services and who we are and what we do. But but it’s kind of one of those [things to] get it done before it’s too late to get it done.
If you have home care set up, we come out within 24 hours [of referral]. Say the surgery was yesterday; we would definitely be there today. We have a 24-hour policy where we’re going out and we’re seeing these patients because that first 24 hours after surgery is when your anesthesia is wearing off. Really that’s the highest risk for fall is within those 24 hours. And if something is going to go wrong, it generally goes wrong within those first 24 hours as well.
DM: Who is eligible for this type of care?
DA: There has to be a physician’s order in order to have Home Health Care services. But we do have an intake team that handles all of that. For the referral process, if the caregiver or the patient and the community, whatever it may be, feels that they need a little bit of additional assistance, all they have to do is give us a call. We need their name, their birthdate, their physician’s name, and from there we can take it.
DM: What else should people know about Bethany Village Home Health Care?
DA: They have a choice in the care that they receive. A choice in if they want nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, whatever it may be, but also a choice as in what company they use. I know a lot of patients in the hospital, they’ll just say, “Hey, I’m going to set you up with home care,” and they automatically just utilize the hospital home care and go with that. But patients have the right to choose. If they know who we are and what we do and what we believe in, they can tell the hospital, “Hey, I want to use Bethany Home Health Care.”
