What is Escort Service?
Escort services for out-patient visits and outdoor activities is one of the on-site healthcare services. A well-trained care worker would visit the client's home or designated location, accompany and escort them for outdoor itineary or medical appointments, and take care of their needs during the journey.
The major job duty of a care worker includes lifting and transferring of the clients with physical disabilities, arranging transportation, assisting client for dressing clothes before medical check-ups, communicating with the medical staffs and monitoring the client's physical condition on the way. After the service, care worker has to relay the medical instruction and explain the situation to the client's carers for their continuous routine follow-ups.
Target Group
Most of the service users seeking for escort services have been experiencing difficulties regarding to their physical disabilities, health condition or mental situation, which is usually rquired some help in assisting or taking care of their routine life.
Patients with chronic diseases are common, especially elderly. Aging makes their bodily functions begin to gradually decline. Apart from typical diseases or disabilities, dementia is commonly seen nowadays, which affects their routine life - even the communication ability. Therefore, patients' carers play a vital role.
Many users live at own homes or caring homes, where they have to travel between homes and hospitals for medical appointments. Their carers may not be able to accompany them at daytime, neither their caring homes are able to afford extra manpower to do so. Some users live with their domestic helpers, but sometimes it is found to be a barrier in communication, where they are not capable to relay the messages from doctors / medical staffs precisely.
Another type of target group can be frequently seen in this decade - the young-old is taking care of their old-old parents. The development of medical technology extends our life expectancy, the clients' carers may be in their 60s - 70s, but they are still taking care of their 80-year-old or above parents. It can be phsyically incapble for them to lift and transfer their parents when going outside or riding on their wheelchairs.
Professional Care Workers for Out-Patient Visits
Public usually have misconception as if it is a simple position for anyone who knows how to handle a wheelchair to be a care worker for out-patient vists. In fact, care workers take a vital responsibilty when they are going out with the clients. In case of any emergency situation, outside the hospital or medical wards, they may not be well-equipped with medical devices or monitoring tools. It is required to make use of their professional knowledge to assess the client's condition and take immediate actions - for the best decision to their clients.
Unlikely other positions in healthcare industry, there are currently no full-scale qualification framework in Hong Kong for care workers for out-patient visits. However, as mentioned, they do play an important and professional role which covers different aspects of healthcare service. It is necessary to take in consideration whether he/she is well-trained in certain healthcare programme or has relevant experience when choosing a suitable care worker.
With You Services is not an ordinary matching platform, the care workers are directly employed by us. All our colleagues are graduated from universities, higher education institutions or training bodies listed in Employees Retraining Board (ERB). They are degree / certificate holders, including registered nurse (RN), care workers, health workers (HW), health care assistant (HCA), care-related support worker, patient care assistant (PCA), etc. Some of the colleagues were working in hospitals, caring homes or community rehabilitation support team, who have rich experience in taking care of all range of clients across different conditions.
Professional Services
Integrated with information technology, With You Services developed a mobile app for frontline care workers, which allows them recording the whole service workflow, jotting down the related information or medical instruction, getting past history of the client. It helps to simplify the existing working procedures and facilitating their work.
During the service, the clients' carers can always login to our online management system, get the real-time location of our care worker and their beloved one.
More than a simple escort service, With You Services aims to provide a better quality and full-scale assistance to the whole family of the clients. An ordinary service focuses on escorting the clients to go and forth between homes and hospitals. But we would like to do further. We hope the client's carer can continuously follow-up their situation in day-to-day care. Therefore, our care workers remark the medical instructions, medication guidance and other related information into our management system. Once the service is complete, a detailed service report and billing items would be sent to their carers. All these important information are clearly shown to them for further follow-up.
