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November 28 is World Home Care Day. The opportunity to shed light on home health providers, a real relay of health care throughout France, with Julien Salma, deputy regional delegate of the Federation of home care providers.
If you thought that home care was reserved for people at the end of life, you are far from reality today. Today, the provision of care at home is an issue at the heart of many French people.
The 7 activities concerned by home delivery
“The home care sector is much broader than visiting people at the end of life. It works in particular around seven activities” announces Julien Salma, Deputy Regional Delegate of the Federation of Home Care Providers
- Home respiratory assistance;
- Nutrition infusion;
- The management of diabetes for patients treated by the insulin pump;
- Ostomy and incontinence disorders;
- Home care for the elderly and those with loss of autonomy;
- Disability.
An offer which therefore concerns an increasingly growing population, according to him : “We are on an average of 2.5 million patients per year, which is not nothing”.
Home care, an alternative to hospitalization?
In a hospital system that is reaching its limits, is providing care at home an alternative, despite the need for hospitalization? For the delegate, “no, in reality we are a complementary activity. There are of course certain treatments where home delivery represents an alternative, for example in the infusion: the stay can be reduced in this way, the patient returns home earlier… But it is also a service which makes it possible to treat ailments as close as possible to patients, such as sleep apnea, which does not require hospitalization”.
The expert insists on this notion of complement and service : “With a nurse, and a home service provider who comes to do all the interface between the actors, trains the nurse in the equipment and takes care of the feedback to the prescriber… The home service really acts as a link between all actors, for the health of the person“.
Is setting up this service complicated?
Technically, materially, the implementation of the service varies according to the necessary activities: “Home oxygen therapy, for example, requires approval”. The service requires in particular the presence generally of a nurse, of a person who will intervene and always of a health professional who guarantees all the good health practices to be put in place. “For example, there will always be a pharmacist in the delivery of oxygen”.
A network which, however, has no difficulty in setting up: “The patient must choose his provider, but in the majority of cases they do not know that this is possible, it is the prescribing doctor who mentions the possibility and sometimes speaks of several known providers”. And as the delegate reminds us, this is the strength of this service offer : “Whether in the mountain pastures on the islands, there is not a place in France where there are no service providers”.
Everything is done under medical prescription, covered by health insurance. For even more monitoring and security, healthcare companies will have to be certified on the basis of a new standard from the Haute Autorité de Santé by July 2023.