December and January are some of the busiest months in home care. Adult children visit with their parents and realize they are not taking good care of themselves. My next couple of newsletters will focus on red flags your loved one may need additional support.
Want to predict if a loved one is about to go to the hospital? Medical condition management is perhaps the greatest single indicator if some will need emergency medical care in the next six months.
- Over 50% of Americans don’t take their medications as prescribed.
- Many patients with chronic medical conditions don’t monitor their conditions on a regular basis
- People frequently ignore dietary and exercise guidelines.
1. Check the Pill Box!!!!
When multiple medications are required at different times of the day, remembering to take medications can be difficult. If medications look like the picture, you’ve been warned they are not taking their meds correctly. Other things to look for:
- No reconciliation of medication that you can compare to pill box.
- Different pills, at the same time of day, for future days. Usually indicates something was missed.
- Pills in previous day/times compartments without a defensible reason
- Pills on the floor
2. Check the monitoring logs
Do they have high Blood Pressure, Diabetes or CHF? If yes, and they not monitoring BP, blood sugar and weight daily, how do they know if treatment is working?
- Are they are not recording vitals on a consistent basis. If you’re not monitoring a medical condition, you’re NOT managing it.
- Do they have a plan if vitals move outside of acceptable ranges? For example, large weight gains for people CHF can be life threatening
3. Are they following dietary and exercise recommendations?
- If supposed to avoid sugar or salt, are the binging on candy and chips?
- If exercises have been prescribed, are they consistently doing them?
- Are you seeing severe declines in mobility or increases in weight? Both can indicate reduced physical activity
Next week’s newsletter will cover other challenges to living autonomously living at home. Please let me know if you have any feedback, questions or concerns.
Helpers LIFE Profile assessment provides a comprehensive care plan that includes 5 key outcome areas that are scientifically proven to determine the risk of hospitalization. This methodology allows us the opportunity to significantly impact the lives of your loved ones. Please let me know if you would like to schedule a free in-home assessment.