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By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
12-6-2008 The caring professionals who help care for the sick and elderly living at home, and who provide instruction to those caring for a homebound loved one, are being honored in December with National Home Care Month.
To commemorate the observance, Pioneer Home Health Care held an open house Wednesday that also served as the announcement for Pioneer’s newest program, Senior Care Management.
For the past 18 years, Pioneer has provided physical therapy, counseling support and skilled nursing care for the home bound from Lone Pine to June Lake.
Pioneer’s original program was created to provide care to those too frail or sick, or recovering from injuries, to leave their homes, but not needing to be institutionalized.
While the home care program still remains the bulk of Pioneer’s services, Pioneer also has a Personal Care Program, providing hourly attendant care, and helping people with their daily living activities so they can remain safe at home.  Pioneer Home Health Care’s Occupational Therapist Catherine Lara (l) and Physical Therapist Laura Molner stand in front of their banner titled “Finding Your Path”. The slogan describes of the pair’s philosophy for helping each individual patient find his/her own path to recovery . Photo by Mike Bodine
Pioneer’s Personal Care Program offers assistance to caregivers by helping with meal preparation and laundry, to help with bathing, grooming, eating and medication reminders.
The Personal Care Program is exactly that, personal care, by way of offering personal companionship to a patient that may not feel safe at home alone.
Certified Health Aid Lisa Velut is the one who does the hands-on personal care, be it bathing or helping clean up a mess that a patient can’t get to.
“I do a lot of things nurses won’t do,” Velut explained, adding that not only does she care for patients but she tries to instruct the patients and their caregivers how to safely do these jobs on their own.
The new Senior Care Program will be headed by Social Worker Keri French.
French explained that part of the new program deals with the long-distance caregiver, a friend or family member who is trying to care for a sick or recovering loved one who lives several hours or several states away.
Literature is available to help answer questions and give suggestions on how these long-distance caregivers can help. The pamphlet, titled “So Far Away: Twenty Questions for Long-Distance Caregivers,” provides answers to how caregivers can deal with frustrations and the guilt of living so far away while still wanting to help; or how to manage finances and insurance; how to make the most of doctor visits to how to find a suitable caregiver; or when to know and how to get a sick loved one institutional assistance; and dealing with wills and end-stages of life.
To best facilitate the new program, French is working on becoming the first certified geriatric care manager for Inyo County.
French said this was one of the only programs of its kind implemented in the country.
In 2007, Pioneer was named a Top 500 healthcare agency by HomeCare Elite, out of the 7,000 home healthcare agencies nationwide.
Pioneer has long been on the “cutting edge,” be it with programs or technology, Registered Nurse Clinical Supervisor Coco Sly explained.
Sly first wanted to acknowledge the efforts of Pioneer’s executive director, Pat West, as being a trailblazer when it comes to finding and accessing new tools and resources.
“High tech, high touch,” was how Sly explained Pioneer’s cutting-edge approaches and tools. One tool in particular is the ZOE medical monitor that allows a homebound individual to self-test their blood pressure, oxygen saturation and weight. The monitor comes with clear results and instructions. These test results are then uploaded to a secure Web site that can be viewed by Pioneer as well as the patient’s doctor.
The “high touch” part comes from the day-to-day monitoring that allows healthcare providers to keep in contact with a patient every day, which can be extremely helpful in ensuring that the patient’s eating properly and taking their medications.
Sly said that nearly every Pioneer professional has a laptop computer that is used with each home visit, with information readily available so the nurse can see what the physical therapist has been doing and vice-versa. Essentially, everyone working on a patient can see what everyone else is doing.
Even though Pioneer has many departments, they all work as a team and work on the whole individual.
“Our concept of wellness is to take a holistic approach and work with the whole person,” said Physical Therapist Laura Molner.
For example, she said, someone with a knee-replacement may feel the need to work on that specific area, “but there’s a person attached to that leg that needs therapy as well.”
Molner works closely with Occupational Therapist Catherine Lara, as they both try to best meet the needs of each individual patient by finding the right exercises or ideas that will help patients reach their goals, whether it’s getting “back to normal” after an operation or illness, or just being able to live independently at home.
The two therapists will make a safety evaluation of a patient’s home and see if there are modifications that can be done. Lara said that a simple suggestion like moving a bed away from a wall to allow access around the whole bed, or placing chairs around the home as little “pit stops” for patients that might not have the ability or energy to make it all the way across a home without stopping, have made a huge difference in added safety and convenience for some patients.
Lara deals with how to modify a home that will facilitate patients with daily living functions, like cooking and showering and house cleaning. For example, she said, a stroke victim, paralyzed on one side, is going to have difficulty cooking or opening cans. Pioneer can loan appliances and tools that have been adapted to help with these special needs that the patient can practice with.
Molner deals with bigger physical movements such as walking or getting up off the floor; she calls this functional retaining.
These safety evaluations are also a way to make sure caregivers are safe as well. Molner said that she gives instruction to caregivers about proper lifting techniques, and French may go in to see how the caregiver is doing, physically and emotionally. The safety and well being of the caregiver is as paramount as the safety of the patient. If the caregiver gets hurt, care for the patient diminishes and so does their health.
Caregivers are most often a spouse or family member, friend or neighbor who are giving all they can and usually for no pay.
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