Your mother has fallen on the trip from the bed to the bathroom, and a falls clinic or fall-prevention program may be the next name on your list. Before you book, you are comparing places on one question: will they look at the night route she actually walks, and will what they find reach you and her doctor in writing?
Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.
What to ask the intake line
Ask whether they need a referral from her physician or whether she can book herself, and what the physician has to sign first. Ask whether the first visit happens at the clinic or at the house. If it is at the house, the walk that matters is the one from bed to toilet, not the living room. Ask whether the intake questions cover falls at night or only falls in general. A program that only asks about daytime falls may never reach the stop where she actually goes down.
Who runs the visit
Find out who will do the evaluation: a physician, a nurse practitioner, a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, or a mix. Each of them looks at different things, so the names on the schedule tell you what kind of visit you are buying. Ask who will be in the room and who writes up the findings. Ask whether the person who watches her walk is the same person who will answer your calls afterward. If the answer is a rotating group with no named contact, write that down.
What the visit should look at on the night route
You are not choosing her treatment here. You are checking whether the visit covers the parts of the trip that matter at 3am: getting up from the bed, the first steps in the dark, the doorway, the turn at the sink, the floor between those points, and the light as it is at night. Ask whether they will watch her make the trip under the lighting she really has, instead of only in a clinic hallway. Ask whether they check her footwear and the furniture she reaches for on the way. Ask how they handle her medicines, and whether they send that part to the prescriber. Questions about her medicines or her health belong with her physician, and a good intake will say so plainly.
Where the report goes
Ask what is written at the end of the visit, who receives it, and how long you should expect to wait for it. Ask whether the written plan lists each item, who is responsible for it, and what counts as finished. A plan that says 'improve home safety' with no names attached will not help you at 3am. Ask for a copy that goes to her physician as well as to you, and ask whether you can add your night log to her file before the visit. Bring the log with the hours, the stop where she went down, and whether she was heading to the bathroom or coming back.
What to compare across two or three places
Put the same questions to each place and write the answers side by side: referral needed or not, first visit at the house or at the clinic, who does the walk, whether they watch the night route, who gets the report, and who answers the phone afterward. Two places that answer the same way are close enough to choose on convenience. The place that will put the night route in writing, name the person doing the work, and send the report to her physician is the one to book. If a place will not give you any of those answers before you commit, keep the list, note who said what, and call the next one. To find names in west county, start with Local help after a fall, St. Louis.