Senior Care Management Services is now a part of the Independent You family! We are excited to welcome Kathleen Allen to the Independent You team.

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FAQs

Caregiver helping senior man with walker

Your Source for the Solutions You Need

Deciding on a home care solution is never something to be taken lightly. There are a number of questions that arise, and finding the answers you need is crucial to making the best choice for a senior you love.

To help you in your search for senior care services, we’ve compiled some of the most frequently asked questions we receive about our care management, caregiving, and transportation services, along with their corresponding answers. If you still have questions that aren’t answered here, feel free to contact us anytime for additional information.

Geriatric Care Management Services

It may be time to contact Independent You if:

  • Caregiving for your loved one has become overwhelming, confusing or beyond your expertise
  • You are concerned about your loved one’s safety
  • You have questions about navigating the maze of health care and community resource options
  • Caring for your loved one is requiring more time than you are capable of providing
  • You live at a distance and need someone to check on your loved one and provide accurate and detailed reports as to their status
  • Your loved one has made frequent 911 calls or has had frequent hospital admissions
  • Your loved one needs someone to call on in an emergency situation or if their health status suddenly changes

A phone call to our office is the first step for a telephone consultation with our Executive Director (ED). The ED will review your family situation and provide you an overview of our practice, and discuss how we may assist you.

Independent You serves the Northern Virginia area, providing services in Arlington and Fairfax Counties, and portions of Prince William and Loudoun Counties for geriatric care management services. This includes the cities of Alexandria, Annandale, Arlington, Ashburn, Burke, Centreville, Chantilly, Clifton, Fairfax, Falls Church, Great Falls, Herndon, McLean, Oakton, Potomac Falls, Reston, Springfield, Sterling, Tysons Corner, Vienna, and Woodbridge. Contact us to see if our services are available in your area.

Medicare does not cover care management services, but long-term care insurance may provide coverage for some aspects of care management services. Consult your insurance company or review your plan to find out the details of coverage.

Care management services are billed on an hourly basis, or fraction thereof. Care management fees are billed for the time spent providing support to the client and your family, travel time, phone calls, emails, correspondence, and costs incurred directly for the client such as purchases for medications and medical supplies.

Caregiving Services

Yes. All of our caregivers speak and understand English clearly.

Shortly after caregiving services begin, you will be contacted by the Independent You staff to see how the services are meeting with your requirements. If you feel that the caregiver and your mom are not a good match, by all means, let us know. We want to find the right person for your loved one and are happy to make any changes necessary. A caregiver and a client spend a great deal of time together, so it’s very important for the relationship to be a good one.

Our caregivers are happy to do laundry, prepare meals, and clean up after their client, but we do ask that you keep in mind, our clients are not maids. They won’t scrub floors, wash windows, clean gutters or perform any heavy lifting. If you need those types of tasks done, we suggest you hire a cleaning company.

ADLs are basic activities of daily living: dressing, bathing, using the bathroom, feeding, and taking medications as prescribed.

Personal care is when a caregiver is providing hands-on assistance with a client’s activities of daily living. A companion caregiver can be there for a client’s safety, but the client is still able to primarily handle the various task independently. Personal Caregivers or Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA) are licensed by the Virginia Board of Nursing after having completed 80 classroom hours of training and 40 hours of supervised hands-on training in a nursing home facility.

Transportation Services

Just give us a call at (703) 999-3006. You will be asked to complete a contract for services and a client profile sheet. Then when your parents need transportation, they can simply contact our office to schedule their driving appointment.

Our contract does not tie a client to any specific duration of time, but it simply states the rates that will be charged for our services and your agreement to pay for those services when billed. We do not collect any money prior to the services being performed.

We collect personal information on each client that we drive in case of any emergency. The information allows us to provide EMS with information concerning any medication that our client might be taking, any medical issues, and who to contact in an emergency. This information is HIPAA-protected so it is not information that we would share with anyone, other than emergency personnel in a life-threatening matter.

Our drivers calculate the mileage from your loved one’s house to their destination and then from the destination back to their home. Our mileage rate is in keeping with the current government reimbursement rate, which is currently $.64 per mile.

When you have scheduled a driving assignment, we do ask for a general idea as to how long you estimate the trip will take. Many people will schedule multiple stops during one assignment: Costco, bank, hair salon, and dry cleaners, for instance.

Contact Us Today to Learn More!

If you have additional questions we haven’t answered here, or would like to learn more about how we can help someone you love, contact us any time at (703) 999-3006.