Mom can't be alone after a hospital stay. How much help does she need? Build the 168-hour grid.

Mom can't be alone after the hospital stay. How much help does she need? Nobody can answer that in hours from a chair on the internet, and this page will not try. What it can do is give you the grid: 168 hours of the week in thirty-five cells, and an honest account of which cells families hold, which ones neighbors hold, and which ones tend to be the ones a company gets called for. Fill it in with a pencil. The blank cells are your phone calls.

The grid

Five blocks a day, seven days. Write a letter in each cell: F for family, N for a neighbor or friend, H for hired help. Leave it blank if nobody is there yet. Print this page, or draw it on the back of the discharge folder.

Thirty-five cells, 168 hours. The overnight row alone is 63 of them. That row is why this page exists.

How to fill it honestly

1. Start with the hands-on blocks. Mornings and evenings are when she needs a person for the bathroom, dressing, meals and getting to bed. Medicare's discharge checklist has the list to work from: it asks whether she is ready for bathing, dressing, using the bathroom, climbing stairs, cooking, food shopping, house cleaning, paying bills, and driving to appointments, and tells you to circle what she needs help with. Every circle is a cell.
2. Then the overnights. Seven cells. Be honest about how many nights any one person can hold and still go to work. Write only the nights you have actually confirmed.
3. Then the standby blocks. Midday and afternoon. She may be fine alone for some of these; that is a question for the care team, asked in exactly those words, and until they answer it, treat the cell as needing a body.
4. Write the names. Only names you have confirmed. "Probably my brother" is a blank cell.
5. Count the blanks. That number is the size of the problem. It is usually smaller than it felt in the hallway.

Source: Medicare, Your Discharge Planning Checklist, opened September 10, 2026.

Which cells families hold well

Evenings, because people come home from work. Weekends. One or two overnights early in the week. Rides, because a ride has a clear end. If you have three family members and you are honest, those cells fill faster than they felt in the hallway.

Which cells tend to be the empty ones

Three, over and over, in family after family.

• Overnights. The bathroom trip at 2am is the reason she cannot be alone, and it is the block that breaks the person holding it. Ask any company about this block first.
• Weekday mornings. The bathroom, the shower, breakfast, the morning tablets from her own box, all between 7am and 10am, all while the daughter is supposed to be at her desk. Ask about this block second.
• The first shower. Not a block so much as one cell, and often the one a family hands to someone who has done it a hundred times.

What Medicare puts in the grid

If she qualifies for Medicare home health, it puts visits in the grid, not shifts. Medicare says home health is part-time or intermittent skilled services, in most cases up to 8 hours a day and a maximum of 28 hours a week combined, and it says plainly that Medicare does not pay for 24-hour-a-day care at home or for personal care when that is the only care she needs. Write each visit in its cell as a V. A V is not an F, an N or an H. The cell still needs a person for the rest of the block.

Source: Medicare.gov, Home health services, opened September 10, 2026.

Who to call to fill the blanks

In order, and none of these is a company.

• Aging Ahead, if she lives in St. Louis County, St. Charles, Franklin or Jefferson County. It is one of Missouri's ten Area Agencies on Aging, serving adults 60 and older since 1973, with Meals on Wheels, caregiving services and community options consulting. Ask for the caregiver program and for community options.
• The St. Louis Area Agency on Aging, if she lives in the City of St. Louis. It serves older adults within the city and can be reached at (314) 612-5918.
• The Missouri Senior Resource Line, 1-800-235-5503, which the state says connects callers to their local Area Agency on Aging after they enter a five-digit ZIP code. Use it if you are not sure which agency covers her address.
• The Eldercare Locator, 1-800-677-1116, a public service of the federal Administration for Community Living that connects families to services for older adults. Useful if you are calling from another state.

Then, for the cells those calls do not fill, a hired caregiver. The Family Caregiver Alliance's guide to hiring in-home help covers the conversation with a parent who does not want a stranger in the house, and the sister desk Hire Caregiver STL covers what to ask any company before you book an hour.

Sources: Aging Ahead, About Us; City of St. Louis, St. Louis Area Agency on Aging; Missouri DHSS, Area Agencies on Aging; Administration for Community Living, Eldercare Locator; Family Caregiver Alliance, Hiring In-Home Help. Opened September 10, 2026.

How fast can in-home care start before discharge?

No public source answers that, so this page will not pretend to. The honest answer is a phone call, and the question to ask any company is specific: "Can you hold an overnight this week, starting which night, and what does the first visit look like?" Ask it on Day 0, from the hallway, because the overnight cell is the hardest to fill on short notice. If the answer is a date, write it in the grid. If the answer is vague, call the next number.

How many hours of care does an elderly parent need after surgery?

Not a number this desk can give you, and be wary of anyone who gives you one without meeting her. The measure is the checklist's activity list, circled by the care team, turned into cells. Some weeks it is the three empty blocks above and nothing else. Some weeks it is the whole overnight row. The grid tells you which week you are in.

If you are working this from another city

The National Institute on Aging says that if you live an hour or more away from the person who needs care, you are a long-distance caregiver, a role it describes as including arranging in-home care, managing money, giving the primary caregiver a break and planning for emergencies. The grid still works from a laptop. Every cell you cannot fill with a name you know is a cell you fill with a phone number you have called.

Source: NIA, Long-distance caregiving, opened September 10, 2026.