As the population of the United States ages and medical science makes people live longer, health care will be the most important topic discussed in the United States for years to come. Perhaps the largest branch of general health care is home health care. Over the years, patients’ desire to maintain as independent a home life as possible while receiving care has become a necessary part of the treatment conversation with little sign of slowing.

Home health care can be very complicated. All you have to do is think about what it would take to treat someone with severe mobility problems outside of the hospital. What if a patient has started to reach the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease and requires twenty-four-hour follow-up? Most homes are not equipped to handle the amount of remodeling and renovation that would be required to make the home environment as conducive as possible to getting the best care. Still, home health care is strong.

Beyond numbers and logistics, it is important to talk about home health care in terms of maintaining a basic quality of life while continuing to receive medical treatment. More patients feel that the best way to heal and recover is at home with their loved ones in familiar surroundings. It’s hard to argue with this line of reasoning, but you can’t help but feel like you need more information.

If you’re still unsure about home health care and what it can mean for you and your family, here are five things to know about it:

Discuss it even when it seems far away – Advance directives and end-of-life documents are not big topics of conversation, but they are important and should be pursued. Take care of these things while you can.

There are variants of home health care – Home health care can range from helping with errands for the elderly to changing dirty sheets for a bedridden patient. Describing what you or your family member needs will help you find the right agency to provide services in your home.

It’s about human connection – Medicine is a sterile mistress, often cold. It’s not friendly. This is where the best home health care agencies shine. His employees strive to connect with patients to make them feel important and help eliminate any ideas they may have that they are a burden.

Training is vital to your success – As such, it is important to maintain standards for the people who will be working with our loved ones. The amount of training can vary by job, so be proactive and ask before you hire someone.

Communication is a cornerstone – The biggest complaint about caregivers is the lack of communication with patients and their families. This is unacceptable. A patient and their family depend on a caregiver to be there when needed, and lack of communication is a sure way to cause irreparable damage to the patient-caregiver relationship.

Home health care, like all matters related to aging, can be difficult to talk about and feel a bit morbid. Still, it’s important to talk about care issues and advance directives because you still can. It doesn’t do anyone any good down the road when cognition has been compromised. You have many good years left. Make the most of them and talk about the hard stuff now so you can get busy focusing on the great stuff.