The last time my mother stayed at the hospital every attendant and nurse showed my mother their photo identification card. Several continued by saying not to allow anyone who wasn’t wearing an ID badge to administer medical treatment or medicine. For my mother and I, it was a feeling of comfort.

Presently both of my parents live in a home beside ours and several medical personnel visit my parents to do some kind of therapy or to just check on their overall condition. On a regular basis, there seems to be a flow of home care staff that visits them at home. Occasionally, based on their physical condition, there are people visiting them on a daily basis and it’s nice as we get to know the attendants personally.

It’s definitely surprising to see that most of them don’t wear any kind of identification card as part of their uniform. Both my parents and I have come to accept them at their word as to who they are and why they are there. Isn’t that a shocking contrast to a stay at the hospital?

Now I am not trying to slam the quickly growing home care business. It has been an invaluable solution for my folks and has prevented them from taking many of their trips to the doctors and has prevented several stays at the hospital.

What I do want to say is that the hospitals have set an excellent standard that the home care industry should follow. Simply by wearing a photo identification card would greatly enhance the comfort level of their home bound customers.

Now it can be a large expense for small home care organizations to add this as part of their overhead if they seek a solution through purchasing equipment; however, there are other solutions such as FullIdentity.com. This company provides both background checks and photo ID cards through an online service at a reasonable price. Larger companies can use a solution like this but it may be more cost effective to purchase their own equipment.

Background checks and photo ID cards should almost be mandatory in the home care industry, although as in many situations it doesn’t require government intervention if the industry takes care of the issue. It has always been a better thing when an industry regulates themselves without government imposing regulations that cost our tax dollars to enforce and also quickly become outdated.

In 2007 there were more than 228,000 home care companies in the US alone. This industry has grown to $54 Billion a year, and is climbing at a fast pace with our aging society. Home care has proven to be a cost effective alternative to hospital stays as well as an alternative to nursing homes. It would just be much better if the home care providers identified themselves as well as the hospital nurses.