Home health

What it means

Home health is nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy or speech therapy provided at home by a certified agency, on a doctor's order and a written plan of care.

Medicare generally covers it where the person is homebound and needs intermittent skilled care. Coverage follows the clinical need, not the person's difficulty coping.

It usually includes some aide time while skilled care is being delivered, which ends when the skilled care does.

Why it matters

The aide hours that come with home health are the part families come to depend on, and they stop with the skilled care rather than when the need does.

It is also the moment to arrange what comes next: the discharge from home health is as much a cliff as the discharge from a facility, and it is scheduled in advance.

When you are likely to meet it

• After a hospital stay, a fall or a new diagnosis.
• When a doctor orders therapy at home.
• When an agency says the episode of care is ending.

Related terms

• Activities of daily livingThe everyday self-care tasks — bathing, dressing, eating, using the toilet, moving from a bed to a chair, continence — that care assessments and insurance policies measure.
• Custodial careHelp with everyday living rather than medical treatment — bathing, dressing, eating, moving about. It is what most long-term care actually is.
• Discharge plannerThe hospital staff member responsible for what happens after a stay ends.
• Home careNon-medical help at home — bathing, dressing, meals, housekeeping, company. Medicare does not pay for it.
• Long-term care insuranceA policy that pays toward help with daily living — at home, in assisted living, or in a nursing facility — which health insurance and Medicare do not cover.
• MedicareThe federal health insurance program for people aged sixty-five and over, and for some younger people with disabilities. It does not pay for long-term care.
• Quality Improvement OrganizationThe independent body that reviews a Medicare discharge or a termination of cover, free and fast, at the patient's request.
• Respite careShort-term care that gives an unpaid family caregiver a break — a few hours, a day, or a stay of some days.
• Skilled careCare so complex that only professional or technical staff can safely provide or supervise it — the test Medicare coverage turns on.
• Skilled nursing facilityA facility providing nursing and rehabilitation care that has to be delivered by licensed clinical staff — not the same thing as a nursing home in the everyday sense.

Official sources

The authority this page describes, at the agency that publishes it. Sahvelo does not restate a rule from a secondary source.

• Medicare — what long-term care is, and what Medicare does not pay for (opens in a new tab)

Sahvelo guidance that uses this

• Housing transitions