Keystone Health

Primary Care Options

In-Home Primary Health Care Services for Seniors

Imagine the ease of receiving the primary care services provided in a doctor's office, but in the comfort of your own residence. Keystone Health's house call patients never visit our office for in-home primary care; instead, the office comes to them. Our doctors and nurse practitioners provide the same care patients would expect in a typical clinic visit without the hassle of traveling to the office and the lost time waiting for their name to be called back to see their provider.

The advantage to Idaho primary care is the provider is allowed to consider the surroundings of the patient when creating a plan of care. We take time to learn as much as possible about our patients by meeting with their family and caregivers when circumstances allow.

Palliative Care Program

Improved Quality of Life for Patients & Their Families

Improving the quality of life for both our patient and their family is of utmost importance to us. One way we do this is through our Palliative Care Program.

Contrary to popular belief, palliative care is for the living, not the dying. The primary goal of palliative care is pain management, but we also provide relief for those suffering from other symptoms associated with serious illnesses such as fatigue, trouble breathing, nausea, and difficulty sleeping. We believe that by simply bettering our patients lives, as well as their family's, the focus can shift to palliative care treatment of the illness and not be clouded by symptoms.

Palliative care is a medical specialty that supports the primary care physician's care of patients with serious and life-threatening illness. Palliative care is not in place of curative care.

Dementia Care

Treatment & Support for Dementia & Alzheimer's

Dementia often is associated as a single illness when it isn't a specific disease. Dementia is a term which encompasses many symptoms; some of the most commonly recognized symptoms include memory loss, decreased thinking skills, confusion, and increased difficulty in completing activities of everyday life.

Dementia is not a disease, but a neurological disorder that occurs when the brain has been damaged or has a disease. Having a diagnosis of dementia doesn't necessarily mean one will have Alzheimer's.

Key to Dementia Care

Providers seeing patients in their own environment is the foundation of excellent care. By seeing them in their natural environment, we are able to provide the best interventions at the appropriate time with caring for dementia patients at home.

Keystone Health provide excellent Alzheimer's home care to patients unable to travel to the clinic.

What Are the Early Signs of Dementia?

Symptoms of dementia are caused by changes in the brain; changes that can begin years before any warning signs of dementia present themselves. There are three general stages for Alzheimer's – mild (early stage), moderate (middle stage), and severe (late stage). The speed at which a patient moves through these stages varies, but progression of the symptoms themselves follows a fairly standardized path.

In the early warning of Alzheimer's, forgetfulness and short-term memory loss are the most common symptoms. Patients may forget where they left something or have trouble recalling the details of a conversation, but long-term memory and the remembering of important dates or events is typically unaffected.

As the dementia warning signs of Alzheimer's progress, patients become increasingly confused about simple facts such as time or place and may have difficulty concentrating; they can still complete daily tasks, but concentrating may take longer than usual.

What Is Sundowning?

Sundowning occurs when a dementia patient exhibits changes in mood, personality, or behavior in the late afternoon and early evening. Doctors do not understand why this phenomenon occurs, but it affects roughly 1 in 5 Alzheimer's patients. Some scientists have suggested the neurochemical changes that occur in the brain with Alzheimer's might affect the patient's biological clock, causing the part of the brain that signals when you are awake or sleeping to break down.

Signs and symptoms of sundowners can also be triggered by low light, depression, boredom, pain, or sleep problems.

When a patient is sundowning, instead of new symptoms, existing sundowners symptoms typically worsen – particularly mental and behavioral symptoms.

Patients experiencing sundowners syndrome have also been known to shadow their caregivers, following them closely and mimicking their movements. They may ask the same questions repeatedly or temporarily lose the ability to communicate. In severe cases, patients become extremely restless and may try to go outside.

Chronic Care Management

Chronic & Transitional Care Management with Keystone Connect

Our Keystone Connect program is the support for both patient comfort and medical needs. With chronic care managers providing weekly contact (either with a visit or a telephone call), patients and their families can rest assured knowing conditions are being monitored and addressed.

Keystone Connect is available to many residents in the Treasure Valley. For insurance to cover these services, patients must have multiple (two or more) chronic conditions that are expected to last at least 12 months.

Chronic conditions require consistent monitoring and management. When inpatient care is required to treat or manage a condition, patients have easy access to necessary medications and care from licensed medical professionals. Once the condition (or conditions) are under control, however, the patient may be released into a community setting, either in their own home or an assisted living facility.

Unfortunately, the transition period between the time a patient is discharged from the hospital and when routine care is reestablished in the patient's community setting can be confusing for both the patient and their caregivers. That is where transitional care management comes in.

Dementia, heart disease, COPD, diabetes, and other chronic conditions can often be managed in the patient's community setting. When there is an interruption in care while the patient is being transitioned from inpatient to in-home care, however, it puts the patient at risk for relapse and increases the risk for readmission. Transitional care management (TCM) exists to ensure continuity of care during this transition period.

Quality In-Home Physical Therapy

Physical Therapy from the Comfort of the Patient's Own Home

We have expanded our unique healthcare approach and, with the addition of our in-home physical therapy for seniors , our Keystone Health patients can now receive quality physical therapy in the comfort of their own home.

Our exceptional in-home physical therapy utilize cutting-edge techniques in conjunction with traditional procedures to alleviate pain and improve comfort for patients.

Treatments include, but are not limited to, the following:

• post-operative orthopedic care
• soft tissue massage
• joint mobilization
• stretching
• activities to improve coordination and balance to decrease falls
• increased ease with functional transfers
• endurance training
• furthering range of motion

The Benefits of In-Home Medical Care for the Elderly

The main benefit of in-home medical care for the elderly is that it helps keep patients out of hospitals, emergency rooms, and nursing homes. According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), more than one million older Americans are completely homebound and another 2-3 million are sufficiently disabled that they cannot go to the doctor's office. Even elderly adults who are not completely homebound are likely to put off visiting their primary care doctor because it is simply too much of an ordeal. As a result, their conditions worsen and treatment becomes more expensive.

In addition to reducing the frequency of hospitalizations and ER visits, home medical visits is more personalized than the care most patients receive in a doctor's office or hospital. Many physicians see 20 or more patients per day and each visit is very brief. By bringing care directly to the patient, it becomes far more personalized; treatment is customized to each patient's individual medical needs. It can also give both patients and their loved ones peace of mind knowing they are being cared for in the comfort of their own home.

Doctor home visits for the elderly also enables patients who live a significant distance from any hospital or medical office the opportunity to receive routine care. According to Nengliang Yao, assistant professor of public health at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, most elderly homebound patients live 30 miles or more away from their medical provider. Increasing the availability of house calls would increase the availability of care for those patients.

Contact Our Home Care Office - (208) 514-0670

Please feel free to contact us at:

Main Phone: 208-514-0670

HIPAA Fax Patient Documents: 208-549-7880