Retirement or senior apartments are similar to apartment units in general except they may include common areas for socializing. Most of these communities provide one or two meals each day for residents and access to private or common kitchen facilities for other meals.
Hospice care provides medical services, emotional support, and spiritual resources for people who are in the last stages of a terminal illness, such as cancer or heart failure. Hospice care also helps family members manage the practical details and emotional challenges of caring for a dying loved one.
Home health care is defined as rendering predominantly medically-related services to patients in a home setting rather than in a medical facility. Basically, the home care practitioner will help patients increase their ability to tend to their everyday needs at home. Home health care may include skilled nursing in addition to speech, occupational and physical therapy. In many cases, it includes assistance with cooking and other household chores. It also includes monitoring the patient&'s prescriptions.
A non-medical home care agency can provide bathing and dressing assistance, medication reminders, and assistance with transferring from the bed to a chair. Caregivers will do household chores such as light cleaning, laundry, errand running, grocery shopping, picking up prescriptions, light meal preparation, and getting the mail. They will also provide services that help with socialization and transportation like accompanying the aging adult to a doctor's appointment, sitting and watching TV together, playing card games or board games, taking the senior to special events or senior centers, going to the library, and other social activities. Non-medical caregivers cannot assist with medication administration but can remind someone to take medications that have been pre-poured.