Healthcare to Homecare
Helping Families Bridge the Gap
from Healthcare
to Homecare
Hi, Welcome to Healthcare to Homecare!
Over the 30+ years I’ve been a caregiver, it feels like I’ve spent 25% of that time searching for information. Time, I didn’t have.
I created Healthcare to Homecare in response to that lost time and my frustration with changes occurring in healthcare delivery systems. Between being a caregiver, my training as a registered nurse, and my 28-year tenure in a leadership role at a major healthcare organization, I have gained extensive knowledge about the healthcare industry from multiple perspectives. Combining that knowledge and experience gives me unique insight into how to find resources and address problems that arise between families and the complex world of healthcare. While I would like to say that healthcare is moving in a direction that supports family caregivers more, I see the opposite occurring. Therefore, I feel a website like Healthcare to Homecare (HTH) can be a great timesaver and resource for both new and experienced caregivers.
I hope you find that to be true. Donna
Discover What Healthcare to Homecare Has to Offer
Below are links to the primary resource pages offered on HTH. Click on the Subject Title to go directly to that resource section. Healthcare to Homecare provides a comprehensive range of medical information and resources of interest to caregivers.
Caregiving
Helpful information on caregiving fundamentals covering topics from emotional adjustment to financial impact, applying for assistance, adapting your home, and more.
Healthcare Systems
Learn to speak the foreign language of healthcare. Find out how healthcare systems operate, who’s who among healthcare roles, regulatory requirements you can use to your advantage, how to speak up, and other essential topics.
Medical
Learn how to perform home care procedures through links to online resources or guidelines presented in posts. Easy-to-understand explanations of medical terms, including how to read lab values and understand radiology reports, are included.
Mental Health
Many individuals have both medical and mental health conditions. Caregivers need to know how to deal with both. This section provides that help.
Caregiving Perspective
From 2011-2019 Donna wrote blogs about her experience as a wife/caregiver of someone with primary progressive Multiple Sclerosis. Her posts originally appeared on her own site, MSCaregiverSharing, and later, as a contributor for multiplesclerosis.net. Donna is reposting those blogs as part of the support she wants to offer new caregivers, in the belief that they will be able to relate to those same feelings and find comfort in knowing they are not alone.
Connections
Connections provide growth opportunities for caregivers to learn and receive support. Find links to over 200 community and public agencies, including podcasts, support groups, and courses.
Compassion Ministry
As Church leaders, you face tremendous challenges every day trying to help your members during the most difficult and joyous times of their lives. With the massive changes in healthcare and welfare reform, many in your Church are likely drowning under financial burdens, struggling against sins that threaten their family stability, and grieving losses associated with being a caregiver or having a chronic medical condition. When hearts ache, they yearn for the comfort and reassurance of God, though many may not recognize the need and therefore, seek consultation elsewhere. Thus begins the journey away from God.
God has placed a burden on my heart to help churches reach individuals in crisis within their congregations in a way that does not add an unmanageable burden to the ministerial staff. Compassion Ministries is a combination of outreach programs designed to support the needs of your members facing either medical or personal crises. Members of the Church, who volunteer to become the outreach contact for a particular family or individual, conduct the outreach.
Through the establishment of the Compassion Ministries, the Church increases individual members’ personal commitment and involvement in spreading the love of Jesus to others through service. As people in the community learn about the Church’s support for its members, the message resonates, drawing them in with the invitation, “Come and see this church that lives out the word of God.” Unsaved family members may listen to messages about Christ during visits or accept invitations to come to Church, where there was no personal connection before.
America needs a revival in our churches as attendance declines year after year. I hope you are not seeing that trend in your Church, but if you are, we may only have one or two generations left before churches are a rare sight on the horizon. Please check out Compassion Ministries using the button below.
