Who publishes it

This site is published by OwnersFirm, a St. Louis company that builds and runs reference sites for local businesses. The articles are written and edited by the Caring for My Wife desk. No doctor writes these pages, and no page carries a person's name as author: do not read any of it as a physician's opinion. It is not.

Why it exists

Men type the job into a search box in their own words, often late at night: wife with dementia won't let me leave, can I hire someone just to sit with my wife, does Medicare pay for someone to stay with my wife. What comes back is usually a sales page or a handout meant for nurses and social workers. We wanted something written to the husband on duty, in the order he has to think about it: the clock, the handoff, the first two weeks after a hospital, who pays, and what to do if he is the one who gets sick.

The site's one device is the day sheet on the front page. Left column is the clock from 6 a.m. to 6 a.m. Right column is the task or the handoff. It is deliberately not a ranking of agencies, hospitals, or facilities.

What it is not

• It is not medical advice. Whether a change in walking, swallowing, mood, or sleep means anything, what a dose should be, whether hospice fits: those belong with the physician who treats her and with the home health or hospice team if one is involved.
• It does not enroll anyone in Medicare home health, MO HealthNet, VA Aid and Attendance, or any other program. When a program is named, the link goes to that program's own public page so you can open it yourself.
• This desk does not score nursing homes, hospitals, hospices, or companies, and it does not knock any of them.
• It does not publish prices. No public file lists what any one company charges by the hour, so this site does not make a number up.
• It does not collect health details. The one form on the front page wants a name, a phone, and a town. It tells you not to put anything else in it.

The paid placement

One slot on this site is paid. It belongs to New Plan Care, an independently owned non-medical in-home care company based in Chesterfield, Missouri, which covers Ballwin, Chesterfield, Eureka, Glencoe, Grover, Pacific, Valley Park and St. Louis. New Plan Care is a client of OwnersFirm, which publishes this site, and pays for this placement. The two companies are not commonly owned.

That box is marked as paid wherever it shows up. It sits outside the articles. Nothing on this site ranked it. Nothing in the articles was paid for. The front-page form is sent to New Plan Care only. If you would rather Call, the number is (314) 405-0887.

How the facts are handled

Every number, program, deadline and dollar figure on this site links inline to a public source: a federal or Missouri government page, or a major nonprofit. Every source was opened by this desk on the date printed on the sources page. Where a source has no year, we do not add one. Where the bank of sources is silent, the site is silent.

At launch, search engines are told not to index these pages yet. That is deliberate. It flips after a person has read the whole site once more.