Home care visits should be at least 30 minutes long, NICE says

Most home care visits should be at least half an hour long to enable carers to provide the personalised and dignified care that elderly patients need when being supported to stay in their own home, says a guideline on social care services from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).1

Shorter visits would be appropriate only rarely, said the finalised guideline on home care, published on 23 September. This might be when the visit is part of a wider package of support, made by a carer who is known to the patient, or made to complete a specific time limited task, such as checking that a medicine has been taken or that a person is safe and well.

The NICE guideline said that …