A daytime aide agreement looks like a rate and a start date. The lines that decide what you are buying are usually below the rate: the minimum shift, how travel is counted, what a cancellation costs, and whether the task list says what the aide will and will not do. Read those lines before you sign, not after the first invoice.
Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.
Keep this agreement separate from the hospice benefit in your head. Hospice visits are provided by the hospice team under its own rules, and the hospice benefit generally does not pay for companion or custodial care, which is the kind of help a daytime aide gives. The federal rules and the Medicare pages that describe the hospice benefit are listed on the Sources page. Check your own coverage with the hospice team and your insurer, because the details depend on your plan.
Read the minimums and the clock
Find the minimum shift length, and ask what happens when you book less. Find out when the clock starts: at the door, when the aide leaves home, or when they reach your parent's house. Ask how travel from the agency office or the aide's home to your house is billed, and whether the return trip is charged. For early mornings, evenings, weekends, and holidays, ask for the rate in writing, not as a general statement.
Read the task list as a boundary
The task list is where the boundary sits. A clear agreement says what the aide does: companionship, meal help, light housekeeping, errands, and medication reminders where the family has asked for them. It can also include picking up prescriptions as an errand. It should say, in plain words, that the aide does not hand out, administer, dispense, sort, or manage medicine. Those tasks stay with the family, the doctor, and the pharmacist. If the list is vague on this point, ask for it to be written out.
Check that each task you need appears on the list. If it is not there, it is not included, whatever the aide is willing to do on a given day.
Read the changes and the cancellations
Ask who sets the schedule, how far in advance you can change a shift, what a cancellation costs and whether that depends on notice, and whether the same aide is assigned each week. Ask what happens when the aide is ill: whether there is a replacement, whether the replacement has been briefed on the routine, and whether you are charged for the time they are not there.
Read how it ends
Find the notice period in both directions, the final invoice, and whether any deposit is returned. The end of an agreement is the part most families read last and need first.
Three questions to send before you sign
Send these in writing and keep the reply: what the minimum shift is and how travel is counted; which tasks are on the list and which are not; and how a cancellation or a late arrival is billed. The written answers are the agreement you are actually buying. For help comparing local options, see Local Help for Hospice Families.