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What are the differences between a nursing home and a convalescent home?

What are the differences between a nursing home and a convalescent home?

Most often, the older you get, the greater the risk of having a health problem. Some pathologies even require hospitalization. In this case, the return home of an elderly person can be complicated and require specific care for them to regain full autonomy in their acts of daily living. Several structures, including the convalescent home and the rest home, allow a person who has been hospitalized or who suffers from a health problem requiring help and temporary supervision to benefit from a period of rehabilitation before return to his accommodation. What are the specificities of these two structures?

The convalescent home, a place of rehabilitation before returning home

The convalescent home, now called an establishment for follow-up care and rehabilitation (SSR), designates a structure authorized to accommodate all people who have stayed in hospital with the aim of providing them with rehabilitation care and rehabilitation so that they can return to their homes independently.

Some convalescent homes, which may be public or private establishments, specialize in caring for the elderly when they leave their hospital stay, and have a geriatrics department.

Their mission is to restore the autonomy of these seniors with a view to their return home after their state of health has stabilized. In a convalescent home, patients benefit from appropriate care and medical supervision for a limited time with the aim of making them independent again in their daily activities. These structures are also required to define and guide patients, on their discharge, towards appropriate care, such as hospitalization at home (HAD) for example, which makes it possible to provide medical and paramedical care, even significant, at the home of the elderly concerned.

In general, convalescent homes pursue several objectives:the continuation and monitoring of care and treatment; reducing the physical and/or sensory disabilities of the people they house; and preparation for discharge, as well as the reintegration of their patients into their homes.

Concerning the elderly accommodated in a convalescent home, the care also concerns their physical rehabilitation following a hospital stay, and the gestures of daily life, their social rehabilitation, the restoration of the rhythms of life, etc.

A convalescent home aims to provide comprehensive care for a person after hospitalization, both in terms of their health problem and their adaptation to the limitations they may suffer following hospitalization, and their return to as much autonomy as possible. before returning home.

The nursing home, for a shorter hospital stay, or even to avoid it

The rest home, more precisely the rest and care home (MRS) which can also be a public or private structure, designates an establishment which welcomes elderly people with a health problem, independent or not, and offers them care. medicalized.

Thus, for a senior who has undergone surgery, a nursing home is a place outside the hospital environment which allows the hospitalization time to be reduced while continuing to benefit from care related to his pathology.

But, unlike convalescent homes, a rest home can receive elderly people who suffer from a health problem that prevents them from staying at home, without it being necessary that they have been previously hospitalized. In some cases, these structures even allow medical treatment which avoids hospitalization. The rest home is then the intermediate solution between hospitalization and medical care at home.

In addition to the care provided, nursing homes are structures intended to also offer the rest necessary for the good recovery of a senior following hospitalization or a health problem, but also which accompany him in his rehabilitation and prepare for his return. at home.