Frequently Asked Questions

Right at Home Boston SouthWest opened in July 2007.

Right at Home caregivers are trained to provide Alzheimer’s & Dementia care, Companionship & Homemaking, Health Reminders, Hygiene, Non-Medical Home Care, Physical Assistance, Respite Care and Wellness. You can view our service offerings on our Home Care Services page. 

Our Care Coordinator will develop a customized care plan. Because care needs can change quickly, we are flexible and can adapt / change the care plan as needed.

Right at Home Boston Southwest provides elder care services wherever you call home.  This can be a home, apartment, Assisted Living Community, Continuing Care Retirement Community, Skilled Nursing Community, Nursing home, Rehabilitation Center or a hospital.

Our territory covers over 40 cities and towns in the Boston Southwest Area.

(Suffolk, Bristol, & Norfolk counties)

Attleboro Falls, Assonet, Attleboro, Avon, Berkley, Brockton, Canton, Dedham, Dighton, Dorchester, Dover, East Freetown, East Taunton, Easton, Fall River, Foxboro, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Lakeville, Mansfield, Mattapan, Medfield, Millis, Norfolk, North Attleboro, North Dighton, Norton, Norwood, Plainville, Quincy, Raynham, Rehoboth, Roslindale, Seekonk, Sharon, Sherborn, Somerset, Stoughton, Swansea, Taunton, Walpole, West Bridgewater, West Roxbury, Westwood, Wrentham

Yes, our caregivers are Right at Home employees. To help ensure the well being and safety of our clients, we perform a Comprehensive Background Check on each employee. Each employee is covered by our general liability and workers’ compensation insurance.

We work with you to develop a plan of care based on your individual needs and encourage your involvement in this process.  Our proprietary screening and selection system helps take the guesswork out of matching the caregiver to you and your family.  However, we want your loved one to feel comfortable with your caregiver and will try to accommodate requests for changes in caregivers (as allowed by law).  

Consistent caregivers is necessary for a successful home care experience.  Depending on the hours and/or times of shifts, there may be different caregivers assigned to your case.  For example, if you have multiple shifts per day, 7 days per week, you would have a different caregiver in the morning / evening or weekends / weekdays.

Right at Home can assist with medication as defined by law. Typically this means that our caregivers can assist with medications or med reminders as long as they are dosed out and on a schedule.

You can change the number or type of service we provide your loved one whenever it's necessary. We understand the care situation can quickly change, so we're as flexible as possible with your loved one's care. Plus, you're never bound to a long-term contract, so you can discontinue your relationship with Right at Home at your discretion. (a 24-hour notice may be required based on the situation).

Right at Home uses several tools to track our caregivers.  Caregivers are required to clock in using a Telephony system (they call a 1-800 number from the client’s phone at the beginning and at the end of their shift). We also have an Internet-based solutions to verify time and attendance. Here caregivers clock in and out via an app (which doesn’t work outside of the radius of the client’s home).

Also, our itemized invoices are always sent after services are complete. This lets you ask any questions about time or date of care, and it allows us to make any schedule adjustments before your invoice is sent.

No. You don't need pre-authorization, pre-qualification, certification or even a prescription for Right at Home's services. You choose the services you want, when to start those services and how often those services are used.

If you request assistance with billing a private insurance policy (such as long-term care insurance) for our services, we're happy to help with the entire "benefits coordination" process. This includes providing any documentation you need for reimbursement by an insurance carrier.

Every family we serve receives a custom care plan specific to their needs and budget. Several factors help determine the exact cost:

• Number of hours of care per week
• Level of home care services received (nonmedical, skilled nursing, etc.)

Our home care services are typically billed on an hourly basis. This makes it easy to make a custom care plan for you. To discuss the exact rates for the services you may need, contact our office. We’ll set up an in-home consultation to begin discussing a custom care plan and the rates for each service on your plan.

We always provide a written rate sheet prior to initiating care services.

Medicare does provide an Eligibility Tool to see if your family qualifies, but they typically don't pay for the type of hourly personal care service that Right at Home provides. Right at Home may be able to provide documentation to third parties such as long-term care insurance companies that could help you obtain the best coverage possible.

Additionally, Right at Home has preferred relationships with many companies who either fully reimburse or partially reimburse for home healthcare. Typical accounts for reimbursement include reverse mortgage, health savings accounts (HSAs) and flexible spending accounts.

We also work with reimbursement programs like the Veterans Aid and Attendance Benefit, which is a benefit paid in addition to the monthly pension paid to Veterans and surviving spouses who require our services.

No. You (or an authorized representative) are only invoiced after the completion of services. Usually, this happens weekly. You never have to pay caregivers directly. And you'll never be asked to pay an additional fee to any employee.

All of our caregivers undergo a rigorous hiring process. When caregivers are interviewed, they must complete a written competency exam. Right at Home then performs complete background checks on all potential employees. Our comprehensive background check process includes the following: Nurse’s Aide Registry, Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record (CORI), The Office of Inspector General (which checks for Medicare fraud). After these checks are complete, we then use CHECKR National Background Check which runs a County Criminal Background Search and National Criminal Database Search, A Federal Criminal Background Search, The Sex Offender Registry, A Social Security Number Trace, A Global Watchlist Search and a DMV report.

Once this comes back, we run an E-Verify screening which verifies employment eligibility and ensures the person being hired is authorized to work in the United States. Right at Home also verifies two (2) professional references.

If an applicant passes our screening process and is hired, they attend a five hour orientation which is taught by one of our nurses. They must also demonstrate competency on Activities of Daily Living (ADL’s) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL’s) in our training lab before ever going to a client’s home.

Caregivers go through an interactive “Dementia Live” as a part of their training.

Our Comprehensive Background Check Process

We adhere to all applicable federal and state guidelines related to privacy of personal and healthcare information. This starts once we have a formal services agreement, before a caregiver even comes to your family member's home. The written service agreement stipulates the exact restrictions on the use of your information, which clarifies that even unauthorized individuals will not be given access to information without a client's – or legally authorized representative's – formal consent.

Your information is never sold to a third party under any circumstances. In fact, only the office personnel and caregivers who are directly involved in your services will have access to information related to the care of your loved one.

What makes Right at Home different from other agencies? It is RightCare! RightCare is our commitment to you to provide an exceptional customer experience through four distinct principles – RightPeople, RightServices, RightApproach, and RightMission. Simply put, our focus is the right people doing the right things, the right way for the right reason.

Right at Home strives to be the best agency in the area. We are one of the few agencies around that have nurses (RN’s and LPN’s) on staff. Our nurses are out in the field daily to make sure things are running smoothly for both our clients and our caregivers. One of our owners (Sandy) is a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) and a certified Dementia Practitioner and the other (Jim) is a Certified Senior Advisor.

Right at Home takes great pride in our caregivers. We work with them as a team by providing support and training. When caregivers are respected and given the tools to succeed, it goes a long way towards retention. This, in turn, results in consistency of care for your loved one.

Right at Home has also partnered with Harvard Medical School and ClearCare to do everything we can to reduce hospitalizations for your loved one. Our caregivers are trained to recognize changes in your loved one and report to the office. Our staff will follow up with the caregiver and/or client to determine if the client needs to be monitored by our nurse or see their doctor. Our hope is that by recognizing slight changes, we are able to handle issues before they become problems and the client needs to be hospitalized.

Give us a call. We'll arrange a time to visit you, your family and/or any authorized representative to fully discuss your particular home care situation and how Right at Home might help.

Together, we'll go over the care your family needs and the care we provide. We'll answer all of your questions regarding in-home care services and costs. Then, we'll begin putting together your Custom Care Plan and matching your loved one with the right caregiver. Usually, care can begin within a matter of a few days.