Guidance · Hospital to home
Home Care After Hip Replacement Surgery
After a hip replacement, the help your parent needs at home is mostly everyday: getting washed and dressed, meals, moving around safely, and rides to follow-up and therapy visits. When the surgery is planned, you can arrange that help ahead of time.
Endurance Home Care helps at home after a hip replacement from its Stamford, CT office, with bathing and dressing, meals, homemaking, transportation to appointments and medication reminders, arranged by the hour around your surgeon's recovery plan.
Why plan the help before surgery?
Hip replacement is one of the procedures Medicare follows closely after discharge: its Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program tracks 30-day unplanned readmissions after elective primary total hip or knee arthroplasty. Your parent will come home with a recovery plan and a follow-up calendar from the surgeon’s team.
What that plan doesn’t cover is the everyday work at home: the morning routine, meals, the stairs and the bathroom, and getting to appointments. That’s where a caregiver helps.
Because the surgery date is usually known, you can plan the help around it. For the wider picture, see transitional care after a hospital stay.
Medicare, the short version
Does Medicare pay for help at home after a hip replacement?
Two Medicare rules explain most of the answer, and they’re worth knowing before the discharge date.
The first is about aide hours. Medicare covers part-time or intermittent home health aide care only if the person is also getting skilled nursing care, physical therapy, speech-language pathology services or occupational therapy. The aide hours come with the skilled care and end when the skilled visits end.
The second is about everyday help. Medicare doesn’t pay for custodial or personal care, meaning help with bathing, dressing or using the bathroom, when that’s the only care a person needs. That everyday help is often what a family needs most by the second week.
Generally covered
The skilled side. Nursing visits, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, and the aide hours attached to them while they run.
Generally not covered
The daily side, standing alone. Bathing, dressing, the bathroom, meals, the house, and the driving, when no skilled care is running alongside them.
Put together, the nursing and therapy are usually the covered part of a hip recovery, and the hours of everyday help in between usually aren’t. Endurance is private pay and doesn’t bill insurance directly. Families with long-term care insurance can use it, and we help with the policy paperwork. See how families pay for care.
What does a caregiver help with after hip surgery?
Your surgeon’s team will give you the instructions for exercises, precautions and medicines. Our caregiver helps with the day around them, from hands-on personal care to meals and rides, and each kind of help below is something you can arrange with us.
Personal Care
Bathing and dressing
Usually the first jobs a family notices, because they come before breakfast. A caregiver helps, hands on, whenever the morning starts.
Personal Care
Moving safely from room to room
Stairs, doorways and trips to the bathroom, including at night. A caregiver stays within reach so your parent isn't managing them alone.
Homemaking
Meals, and the kitchen after them
Cooking means standing, carrying and reaching, which are all harder for a while. A caregiver makes the meals, serves them and clears up.
Homemaking
Laundry and the ordinary upkeep
Beds changed, laundry done, and the floor kept clear of anything a walker could catch on. A tidy house is easier to move around in.
Transportation
Rides to follow-up and therapy visits
Appointments are fixed and someone has to drive. A caregiver drives, comes in for the visit if you'd like, and fits the trip into the day's hours.
Medication Reminders
Medication reminders
A reminder at the times the discharge instructions set, fitted around the rest of the day.
How do the hours change over the weeks?
There’s no set length of time for help after a hip replacement. The surgeon’s team sets the pace of recovery. The weeks below show only the shape the caregiver hours usually take.
The first weeks home
The first stretch usually needs the most hours: help with the morning routine, again in the evening, and company through the parts of the day that are hardest alone.
Around appointments
Hours shift around follow-up and therapy visits, with the ride and the time in the waiting room built in.
Fewer hours
Hours come down as the routine settles, week by week and by agreement. Nobody has to commit to a set length of time on day one.
Hourly care is one of the four types of care Endurance offers, and it suits this shape: help in blocks where it’s needed, moved when the appointments move. If the nights are hard, overnight care gives you an awake caregiver for the night hours. We provide personal care in Connecticut and New Jersey. In New York we provide companion care, by the hour, overnight, live-in or around the clock. The cost depends on the hours each week needs and how they change as recovery goes on. For budgeting, the Long Term Care Navigator 2026 Connecticut figures put the Connecticut median at $37 to $42 an hour for home care and $35 an hour for a home health aide. Those are market medians for the state, not Endurance rates. Ours are quoted on the call, from your dates and your hours.
How do we get started?
If the surgery is still ahead
Plan ahead of the surgery date
A planned surgery gives you time to get ready. Work through our hospital discharge checklist for elderly parents while the date is still ahead.
If they’re already home
Start with the days in front of you
The first days home need their own plan. Read what the first 72 hours home look like, and call us when you’d like to talk it through.
Either way, it starts with a call to our care team. One of our registered nurses then visits at home and writes the care plan with you, because a registered nurse conducts every Endurance client assessment. A Care Coordinator chooses a caregiver for your parent and introduces them before the first visit, and a Care Manager keeps the family updated as the plan changes. Families tend to remember the nurse visit as the moment the week stopped feeling improvised.
Questions families ask after hip surgery
What help do you need at home after a hip replacement?
Most families need help with bathing and dressing while movement is limited, meals cooked and cleared, rides to follow-up and therapy appointments, medication reminders, and someone steady nearby on the stairs and on trips to the bathroom. Your surgeon's team and therapist guide the exercises and precautions. A caregiver helps with everything around them, hour by hour, until the daily routine is settled again.
How long is home care needed after hip surgery?
There's no set length. The surgeon's follow-ups and the discharge plan set the pace of recovery. Hourly care suits this well: more hours in the first weeks, then fewer as strength and confidence return. You can adjust week by week, so there's no need to commit to a guess on day one.
Can a caregiver drive my parent to physical therapy?
Yes. Transportation is one of Endurance's listed services. A caregiver can drive your parent to therapy and follow-up appointments, come in for the visit if you'd like, and fit the trip into the day's care, so the family doesn't have to scramble for rides.
Tell us the surgery or discharge date.
We’ll talk through the help your parent will need at home and how the hours might change over the weeks. The first conversation is free, and nothing starts until you say so.