The last time my mother stayed at the hospital every attendant and nurse showed my mother their photo identification card. Several continued by saying not to allow anyone who wasn't wearing an ID badge to administer medical treatment or medicine. For my mother and I, it was a feeling of comfort.
Presently both of my parents live in a home beside ours and several medical personnel visit my parents to do some kind of therapy or to just check on their overall condition. On a regular basis, there seems to be a flow of home care staff that visits them at home. Occasionally, based on their physical condition, there are people visiting them on a daily basis and it's nice as we get to know the attendants personally.
What is surprising to me is that most of them don't have an ID card as part of their uniform. My parents and I have come accustomed to accepting them at their word that they are who they say they are. What a shocking contrast to the hospital.
Now I am not trying to slam the quickly growing home care business. It has been an invaluable solution for my folks and has prevented them from taking many of their trips to the doctors and has prevented several stays at the hospital.
What I am saying though is that the home care industry should start working under the same standard as the hospitals. Simply by wearing a photo ID card they would greatly add to the comfort level of their customers.
Now it can be a large expense for small home care organizations to add this as part of their overhead if they seek a solution through purchasing equipment; however, there are other solutions such as FullIdentity.com. This company provides both background checks and photo ID cards through an online service at a reasonable price. Larger companies can use a solution like this but it may be more cost effective to purchase their own equipment.
Identification cards and background screening should almost be mandatory in this industry, but as in many things that don't require government intervention if care is taken by the industry. It's always a better thing when an industry regulates itself without the government imposing standards that can quickly become dated and cost our tax dollars to enforce.
There were more than 228,000 home care organizations in the US in 2007. The industry has been climbing at a fast pace with our aging society and recently passed $54 Billion a year. As a cost effective alternative to nursing homes and extended hospital stays the home care industry is here to stay. As time progresses, hopefully the home care industry will begin to follow the standards that have been set by the hospital administrators as it applies to identification cards.
Being the founder of Virtual Tournament Director and http://www.FullIdentity.com, Allen Richardson has developed solutions for registration and identification cards for over seven years. Additionally, he has served as a consultant to Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railway, Southwest Airlines and many other organizations. |
