3 common safety risks for home healthcare workers

When you own a home health agency, ensuring the safety of your health care workers is part of the job. There are many home health care patient and safety hazards that your staff will need to navigate each time they interact with a client. Providing proper training, safety equipment, and insurance can help keep your workers and business safe.

Here are three common safety risks and home health tips for handling them in your business. Plus, we’ll cover business insurance policies that you may consider for added peace of mind.

1. Slips and falls

Client homes may be full of potential slip and fall hazards. These could lead to an injury for the patient, your staff, or visitors to the patient’s home (like family, friends, or other healthcare professionals).

Things to look out for:

• Uneven or slippery surfaces inside and outside
• Worn carpeting or curling vinyl flooring
• Electrical cords across walkways
• Clutter or debris in hallways, on stairs, or across walkways
• Lack of handrails on stairs
• Open drawers
• Poor lighting

2. Lifting and twisting injuries

Transferring patients from their beds, a chair, or cars are common tasks for home health aides. They may also perform housekeeping duties that involve lifting or twisting, such as laundry or moving heavy items. These actions can result in serious injury, especially if they are not performed correctly.

3. Hazardous materials

Home health aides and professional caregivers may also come into contact with hazardous materials while they are working. Coming into contact with bodily fluids—either while directly caring for patients or while cleaning, making beds or doing laundry—can carry serious diseases that could be passed to your staff.

If your staff does housework for patients, they may also be using harsh cleaning supplies or disinfectants that can cause injury or illness if used improperly.

Tips for avoiding safety risks

Personal safety when visiting a client is vital for home health aides and caregivers. Consider putting these home health tips into action in your business to help prevent accidents, injuries and illnesses:

• Do a home safety assessment for patients and provide recommendations for minimizing risks within their homes.
• Require staff to wear closed-toe, non-slip footwear when working.
• Provide staff with appropriate personal protective equipment, such as masks and medical gloves.
• Run training sessions around proper lifting and transfer techniques.
• Schedule regular safety training for home health care workers to educate staff on risks and how to manage them.

Protecting your home health business with insurance

Taking steps to manage home health care patients and safety hazards can help you avoid many accidents, but some may still happen. That is why many home health agencies choose insurance to help create a safety net for their business.

Accidents, injuries and illnesses could cost your business thousands of dollars in lost productivity, compensation payments, or legal fees. Insurance can help you shoulder these and other expenses that could quickly drain your bank accounts.

Insurance policies you might consider include:

General Liability – Also referred to as Commercial General Liability (CGL) or “slip and fall coverage”, this insurance can protect your business against bodily injury or property damage lawsuits from outside parties.

Workers’ Compensation – Workers’ Compensation insurance protects you against medical expenses and lawsuits that can arise from employee workplace injuries and illnesses. It could also pay lost wages as a result of the work injuries that an employee sustains.Most states require businesses to have Workers’ Compensation coverage for their employees.

Professional Liability – Professional Liability insurance can protect professional service providers from potentially devastating financial damages resulting from alleged negligence or error in the delivery of your services.

BizInsure understands home health agencies. We offer coverage made for the home health industry from trusted insurance partners. And you won’t waste valuable time waiting to get covered.

In as little as 10 minutes, you can compare quotes online, choose the policies that fit your business needs, and get instant coverage. There’s no complicated paperwork to buy.

Get your free home health agency insurance quotes today with BizInsure!