South Carolina home care programs

Home health: the medical benefit

In South Carolina, skilled home health is Home Health Services (HHA). It is a medical benefit: a doctor or other practitioner orders nursing, therapy or home health aide visits under a written plan of care, and the visits stop when the skilled need ends.

Only a licensed home health agency enrolled with South Carolina Medicaid can bill it, and the agency's own nurses, therapists and aides make the visits.

Home care: non-medical personal care through an agency

Help with bathing, dressing, eating, toileting and household tasks is "home care" or personal care. In South Carolina the agency route is Personal Care Services (State Plan, EPSDT). No skilled need is required; the person qualifies on functional need, usually measured by an assessment of daily activities.

The agency recruits, trains, schedules and pays the aides, and it is the employer. The aide is agency staff rather than a relative.

Consumer-directed care: the person hires their own aide

South Carolina's consumer-directed option is Attendant Care (Self-Directed). The person receiving care, or a representative, recruits, hires, trains, schedules and supervises the aide, and can let go of one. A fiscal intermediary runs payroll, taxes and background checks, so the person never handles wages directly.

This is the route most families use to be paid: Attendant Care (Self-Directed) allows a relative to be hired as the paid aide. Which relatives qualify (adult children, parents of adults, spouses, legal guardians) and how a live-in caregiver is treated are set program by program.

Structured family caregiving: a paid live-in family caregiver

South Carolina has no structured family caregiving program. A family caregiver is paid instead through consumer-directed care (Attendant Care (Self-Directed)), by the hour, as the participant's chosen aide.

Other ways South Carolina pays for care at home

Waiver in-home services: Community Choices Waiver, Head and Spinal Cord Injury (HASCI) Waiver, HIV/AIDS Waiver and Mechanical Ventilator Dependent Waiver, Intellectual Disability and Related Disabilities (ID/RD) Waiver and Community Supports (CS) Waiver, and Medically Complex Children Waiver. These pay for in-home supports for people who meet a nursing-home or similar level of care, often with more services than state plan personal care and, in some programs, a waiting list or enrollment cap.

PACE: Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). One PACE organization covers medical care, a day center and home care for people 55 and over who need nursing-home level care.

State-funded: Supportive Services — Home Care (homemaker, personal care, chore). Paid from state funds outside Medicaid, for people who do not qualify for Medicaid or are waiting for it.

Which one fits

• Needs nursing, wound care, injections or therapy at home: home health (Home Health Services (HHA)).
• Needs daily help and wants an agency to supply and manage the aide: Personal Care Services (State Plan, EPSDT).
• Wants to choose the aide, including a relative where allowed: Attendant Care (Self-Directed).
• Meets nursing-home level of care and needs more than personal care: Community Choices Waiver, Head and Spinal Cord Injury (HASCI) Waiver, HIV/AIDS Waiver and Mechanical Ventilator Dependent Waiver, Intellectual Disability and Related Disabilities (ID/RD) Waiver and Community Supports (CS) Waiver, and Medically Complex Children Waiver.