Are home care caregivers vetted and nurse-supervised?

The vetting stack at a Southeast Michigan agency should look like this: an ICHAT criminal background check, a national sex-offender registry search, an OIG exclusion check, a driver’s-record pull if driving is part of the job, drug screening, verification of prior employment, and reference calls. If any layer is missing, the family — not the agency — carries that risk.

Training is not the same as vetting. Baseline training covers HIPAA, universal precautions, dementia basics, transfers, and abuse-reporting. On top of that, a Registered Nurse verifies real-world skills — the correct transfer for a bariatric client, the correct cue for a Parkinson’s freezing episode — before the caregiver is placed. That verification is repeated for any case-specific technique.

Ongoing supervision runs through a care coordinator (often an RN or MHA-credentialed director) who reviews the daily care log, addresses schedule and match issues, and escalates clinical questions to the RN. If the family sees something off, the coordinator is the single point of contact — not a rotating call center.

Private-hire caregivers hired through Craigslist or a neighborhood referral generally bypass all of this. That is why the agency rate is higher than the private-hire rate: vetting and supervision are what the family is paying for, alongside payroll tax, workers compensation, liability insurance, training, and backup coverage.

For the full breakdown, see the cornerstone: Hospital Discharge Home Care guide.