"Mention home care! Mention home care!"
By Theresa Flaherty, Managing Editor
Updated Fri November 9, 2012
I was watching, I believe, the CBS Evening News last night and caught a segment about how storm weary New Yorker/New Jersey residents were holding up without power.
I caught a clip of a caregiver who was filing up/firing up--whatever it is you do the generator three times a day. She was caring for someone (sorry, I was only half-listening at that point) that uses a vent, a nebulizer and goodness knows what else.
She did it she told the earnestly somber TV reporter, because otherwise he'd have to go to the hospital, where 1. no one except hypochondriacs and Munchausen-types want to be, and 2. he would be at greater risk of catching an infection (read: not fun, potentially deadly and, oh yeah, expensive).
At which point I was yelling at the TV: Mention home care! Mention home care!
And me not even a provider.
Sorry, providers, no go. But it would have been the kind of publicity you can't buy if she had, or if one of the many dedicated HME providers in the area happened to be there checking on patient.
Our December issue has coverage of Hurricane Sandy, and I imagine it will be a staple in at least a few newswires. Feel free to pass these on, as well as reports from others about the measures providers are taking to keep patients, safe, alive and at home.
Theresa Flaherty
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