How Medical Priorities is helping seniors during the COVID-19 pandemic
Medical Priorities Ltd is a London based home health care agency helping seniors to remain safe, comfortable, healthy and independent in their homes or any other preferred location. This could be the family home, a retirement home, a nursing home or living with their loved ones. Our mission is to provide and deliver high quality, client driven care in the community. We are accredited with exemplary status by Accreditation Canada.
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged our organisation together with a lot of other organisations who aid seniors. Seniors are at the highest risk for severe illness and death from COVID-19.
Challenges we have come across
• Loss of employees due to their fear of contracting the disease
• Difficulties to access and procure PPE
• With the London transit reduction of service, employees who bus do not have the ability to go to clients. Hours of care might be reduced for clients where bus service ends early or has been cancelled.
• Loss of work hours for our full-time employees who can no longer go from home to home helping clients due to a new provincial policy of having workers only attend to one client.
How we have stepped out
• We have reduced the number of clients the caregiver sees, keeping them with one dedicated client or place of work.
• Screening the clients and employees before every visit to make sure we go in with the appropriate PPE.
• Educating and training our employees on the safety measures to take when they are in and out of homes, continuously reminding them of the importance of sanitizing surfaces, washing their hands and physical distancing.
• Supplying our caregivers with sanitizers and appropriate PPE to ensure a safe environment for them and their families.
• Helping families understand the importance of physical distancing but encouraging the use of technology to still connect daily with their loved one.
• Supplying families with day to day updates of how their loved ones are doing.
• Our employee’s health insurance and benefits are still full in place, despite being affected by the reduction in their hours of work.
• Helping our clients to obtain the appropriate personal protective equipment.
• Utilizing online grocery shopping where appropriate.
• Doing the Client shopping to minimize Client exposure to potentially infected shoppers.
The fight against COVID-19 continues daily, this is the time we are needed most in the community by our seniors. Meal preparation, grocery shopping, personal care, dressing, toileting, bathing, overnight stays, transfers, exercises, medication assistance are still part of the important care seniors need. We at Medical Priorities continue to be taking on new clients as we know maintaining dignity and health is still important for your loved ones.
We are available 24/7 to assist you. Call us on 519-432-1510 and we will arrange a free assessment.