Tag: occupational-therapy
-
When the Clinic Can’t Come to Them: The Case for Low Vision Home Therapy Services
You have a client on your caseload with significant vision loss. They are 70 years old, retired, and mostly homebound. They missed their last two outpatient appointments — not because they didn’t want to come, but because getting there is genuinely hard. Their world has gotten smaller, and their risks have gotten bigger. This scenario…
-
Telehealth vs In‑Person OT Home Visits – What a Cost Analysis Means for Home‑Mod OTs
In home occupational therapy services are a cornerstone of safe discharge and aging in place. They combine environmental assessment, equipment prescription, and home modifications to support safety, independence, and caregiver capacity after hospitalization (McBride et al, 2023; Clemson et al., 2008; Health Quallity Ontario, 2013). Historically, these services have been delivered almost entirely in person,…
-
Telehealth, Medicare, and Home Modifications: What OT Practitioners Need to Know Now
Telehealth is no longer an emergency workaround—it is becoming a permanent part of rehabilitation service delivery. For occupational therapy practitioners who specialize in home modifications, this is particularly important. Your work lives at the intersection of people, function, and the built environment, and telehealth gives you powerful new ways to assess homes, coach caregivers, and…
-
New ALS Homecare Standards: Why OT-Led Home Modifications Are Now Essential
Most people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) want to remain at home for as long as possible, even as weakness, fatigue, and respiratory changes make daily activities increasingly difficult. The new ALS Home Health and Durable Medical Equipment Medical Standard Guidance from the American Association of Neuromuscular and Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM) is a major…
-
From Assessment to Action: The OT’s Clinical Map for Hoarding Disorder
You are standing in the doorway of a client’s home. Every surface is covered. The kitchen table has not been visible in years. There is a narrow path through the living room. The smell is difficult. Your client is watching you from across the room, arms crossed, eyes guarded. You are an occupational therapist. And…
-
Reframing Hoarding as Occupation: What Occupational Therapists Bring That Nobody Else Can
Ask most clinicians what they think when they hear “hoarding disorder,” and the responses tend to cluster around the same themes: clutter, safety risk, resistance, and difficulty. The mental image is a home filled floor to ceiling with accumulated objects — a problem to be solved, removed, or cleared. But what happens when you bring…
-
Toolbox Tips: The Organized Home Mods Therapist: Why a Better System Leads to Better Recommendations
If you work in home modifications, you already know the hard part is not just identifying problems. The hard part is moving from “I know there’s a solution for this” to “I can quickly recommend the right solution, explain why it fits, and follow through with confidence.” A visual system like a Trello board or…
-
Disaster Planning When Your Client Has Dementia: What Every OT Needs to Know
Emergency preparedness is complicated for anyone. For a person living with dementia, it can be overwhelming, terrifying, and — without thoughtful, individualized planning — genuinely life-threatening. Research published in The Gerontologist found that disaster preparedness is experienced as one of the most challenging responsibilities of dementia caregivers, with barriers including cognitive and behavioral unpredictability, limited caregiver capacity…
-
From Doorstep to Desktop: How Telehealth Is Reshaping Home Safety and Accessibility in Occupational Therapy
Telehealth is no longer a backup plan in occupational therapy. It has become a meaningful service delivery model for evaluation, caregiver coaching, follow-up, and selected home safety and accessibility work, especially for older adults who want to age in place (Ding et al., 2023; Gately et al., 2021). As healthcare continues to shift toward community-based…
-
Seeing Safely at Home: Aging Eyes, Cataracts, and Evidence-Informed Home Modifications
Vision changes are so common with aging that many people treat them as an inconvenience rather than a meaningful home safety issue. The problem is that blurred vision, glare sensitivity, poorer contrast sensitivity, and slower adjustment to changes in lighting can quietly reshape how a person moves through the home, completes daily tasks, and responds…