How to Prepare: 7 Tips for the Care Assessment

How to Prepare: 7 Tips for the Care Assessment 

After applying for a care level, a home visit by the Medical Service usually follows. It is worth preparing well for the appointment. In this article, you will learn what you can do in advance, which documents are important, and why normality is important. 

One thing is certain: Anyone in Germany who needs care can take advantage of various benefits from the nursing care insurance. A prerequisite for this is the official confirmation of the need for care and the classification into a care degree. The process is clearly regulated: after the application to the care fund, a home visit for care assessment usually follows. For those with statutory insurance, this is carried out by the Medical Service (MD) of the health insurance companies or an independent nursing assessor. For those with private insurance, the company medicproof is responsible for the assessment.

The appointment for the assessment often causes anxiety. This is crucial in determining whether a person receives a care level and which of the five care levels they are classified into. Additionally, many people find it challenging to open up to the topic of care and seek help from care providers. How fortunate that you have decided to do so and are seeking support! Caring is not something that one person can manage alone, and certainly not as a side task, as it is often still suggested socially.

Here is how you can prepare well for the nursing assessment appointment:

1. Well-informed
   As with any important appointment, it is worthwhile to inform yourself in advance about the process and content. Important to know: The assessment is created based on fixed criteria and a pre-prepared questionnaire. During the appointment, the nursing assessor will examine the following six areas:

    - Mobility
    - Cognitive and communicative abilities
    - Behaviors and psychological issues
    - Self-sufficiency
    - Coping with disease- or therapy-related demands and burdens
    - Designing everyday life and social interaction

   The areas are weighted differently. The area of self-sufficiency has the highest weighting, at 40 percent.
   Here you will find information from the Medical Service about the procedure: https://www.medizinischerdienst.de

2. Make use of care consultation in advance
   Many care situations are complex, and it is not so easy to clearly understand your own situation and care needs in advance. Therefore, it may be helpful to consult with a care advisor before the care assessment. FamPlus offers consultations, for example, and can provide relatives with valuable tips for the assessment before the appointment with the Medical Service. On the FamPlus website, you will also find a care level calculator that can help you determine the anticipated care level. https://www.famplus.de/guest/

   A point of contact is also the nursing care fund. What many do not know: From the day the application is submitted, you can already use counseling services, either through the nursing care fund or another care counseling center. Here you will find an independent online database for searching care counseling centers: https://www.zqp.de/beratung-pflege/

3. Keep a care diary
   In the conversation, the assessor will ask various things. The aim is to determine how independently the person can manage daily life and deal with the illness. Questions will be asked about which areas the person already receives help in, who provides this help, and how it works. At that moment, it is often not so easy to have such difficulties at hand. Therefore, it is helpful if you keep a care diary in advance and record the everyday challenges. Note down every action you take for the person in need of care. Also write down seemingly obvious things, like: "In the morning, I stand in the bathroom for ten minutes and wait while he washes at the sink because he often gets dizzy.

   For many family members, it is also an emotional hurdle and feels as though one is being disloyal to the person when talking about problems and what doesn't work well in everyday life. It becomes easier if you have kept a care diary that you can show to the assessor. This way, certain things don't need to be discussed but are still heard. Online, you can find templates for care diaries. The one from KKH is quite comprehensive. https://www.kkh.de

4. Together on site
   Such a visit for an assessment is exciting. You can support the person well by not leaving them alone during the appointment. Take your time for the assessment. This provides reassurance. The person may find it difficult to answer certain questions or may not perceive certain challenges. In the conversation, you can share your own observations and contribute to enabling the assessor to get a comprehensive picture of the care situation. At the same time, you also have the opportunity during the appointment to speak with the assessor in private afterward.

   It can also be helpful to seek outside support, such as a care advisor or a staff member of the care service, if you are already receiving assistance.

5. Keep important documents ready
   In order for the assessor to quickly get a good overview of the home situation, it is helpful to have important documents ready. These include:

   - Current reports from the general practitioner
   - current findings from the specialist
   - possibly the discharge report from the clinic or rehabilitation facility
   - current medication plan
   - Care documentation, if a nursing service is already providing support

6. List all tools
   Preparing for the appointment also involves listing all the aids you are already using. This, too, can sometimes be forgotten in the heat of the conversation. Once everything is noted down, the care assessor is quickly well-informed and can accurately assess the current care needs. The aids include, among others:

   - Glasses 
   - Hearing aid 
   - Incontinence pads
   - Emergency Call System
   - Cane
   - Compression stockings

   A look at the form of MD Westfalen-Lippe can be helpful: I'm sorry, but I am unable to browse the internet or access specific websites directly. If you have a text you would like me to translate, please provide the text here, and I will be happy to assist with the translation.

7. Maintain normality
   Clean up extra and tidy thoroughly to make the apartment appear orderly before visitors arrive? That is normal and probably almost everyone does it. However, if the home visit is for a care assessment, you should refrain from doing so and maintain normality. Only in this way can you provide an honest insight into daily care and show the apartment as it usually looks. This is important because only then can the assessor properly evaluate the current situation and the need for care.
    

Author: Peggy Elfmann

Sources:

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https://famplus.de/gast/angebot/pflegeberatung

https://www.biva.de/deutsches-pflegesystem/pflegebeduerftig-was-nun/pflegeberatung/

https://www.biva.de/deutsches-pflegesystem/mdk-begutachtung/mdk-begutachtung-vorbereiten/

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