Home Care vs. Home Health Care: What’s the Difference?

Home Care (Non-Medical)

This is what we provide. Home care means non-medical assistance with daily living: bathing, dressing, grooming, meal preparation, medication reminders, companionship, light housekeeping, mobility support. It’s provided by trained caregivers, not nurses, and it isn’t ordered by a physician or billed to Medicare. It can be scheduled for a few hours a week or around the clock, for as long as a family needs it. Explore our full range of services to see what’s included.

Home Health Care

Home health care is medical care delivered at home: skilled nursing, physical, occupational, or speech therapy, wound care, and similar services. It’s ordered by a physician as part of a treatment plan, and typically covered by Medicare when specific criteria are met (homebound status, physician certification, a skilled and intermittent need). It’s usually short-term, tied to recovery from an illness, injury, or hospitalization, and delivered by licensed clinical staff. We do not provide home health care. If that’s what your family needs, a certified home health agency or your physician’s office is the right starting point.

Assisted Living

Assisted living is a residential option, not an in-home service, your loved one moves into a community that bundles housing, meals, and a baseline level of care into one monthly cost. It’s a fundamentally different decision than either home care or home health care, because it means leaving the home rather than staying in it. Some families use home care specifically to delay or avoid that move.

Can You Use More Than One at the Same Time?

Yes, often. It’s common for a client to receive Medicare-covered home health care for a specific medical need, recovering from surgery, for example, while also receiving our non-medical home care for companionship, meal preparation, and personal care during the same period. The two are billed separately and serve different purposes, but they can run in parallel.

Which One Do You Need?

• Need help with daily living tasks, not medical treatment → home care
• Need skilled nursing or therapy ordered by a doctor after an illness, injury, or surgery → home health care
• Ready to move out of the home into a supportive community → assisted living
• Not sure yet → a free in-home assessment can help clarify what your family actually needs

A Common Scenario, Walked Through

Here’s a situation we see often, and it illustrates the distinction better than a definition can. Someone has hip surgery and comes home from the hospital. For the first few weeks, a physician orders home health care: a nurse checks the surgical site, a physical therapist works on mobility, both covered by Medicare because they’re skilled, physician-ordered, and time-limited. At the same time, that person also needs help getting dressed, preparing meals, and simply not being alone all day. None of that is something the home health nurse or therapist is there to provide, and none of it is covered by Medicare. That’s where non-medical home care comes in, running in parallel, privately paid or through one of the other sources covered in our payer guide. When the home health episode ends (usually once recovery plateaus), the home care can continue for as long as it’s needed, since it was never tied to a medical certification in the first place.

Talking to a Doctor or Hospital Discharge Planner

If your family is navigating a hospital discharge, the discharge planner or physician can tell you specifically what home health services have been ordered and for how long, but they typically won’t coordinate non-medical home care, since it falls outside their referral network. It’s worth asking directly, "what happens with daily support once the home health visits end," so there isn’t a gap between when clinical care stops and when your loved one still needs help with everyday tasks.

Why This Confusion Costs Families Time

We see this mix-up cost families real time, and time matters here, a family searching for "home care" while actually needing physician-ordered therapy will end up calling the wrong kind of provider, and vice versa. Getting the terminology right up front means the first phone call is more likely to be the right one, instead of a referral chain that adds days to getting help in place.

A Quick Way to Check Yourself

If you’re still not sure which category your situation falls into, ask one question: is a doctor ordering and supervising this specific care as treatment for a medical condition, or is it help with everyday tasks that don’t require a medical order at all? If it’s the former, you’re likely looking at home health care, and the right first call is your physician’s office or the hospital discharge team. If it’s the latter (bathing, meals, companionship, medication reminders, mobility support, housekeeping), that’s home care, and it’s exactly what we provide. When in doubt, a free in-home assessment with us costs nothing and can help sort out which category actually applies to your family’s situation.