Stacey Eisenberg was 13 when she started working in senior care. Before that, she grew up around it, in the nursing home where her mother worked.

Today she is co-owner of A Place At Home – North Austin, and earlier this week we got news we are proud to share. Stacey has been named a finalist for Austin Business Woman’s 2026 Health Business/Expert of the Year award.

 

What the award recognizes

 

Austin Business Woman created the category to honor a woman-owned business making a real difference in health and wellness through innovation, leadership and commitment to community well-being. The winner will be announced at the 2026 Star Awards Gala on November 12, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at The Norris Conference Centers in Austin.

To be clear, finalist means finalist. We are not announcing a win. We will tell you how the night goes. But for now we are just proud of even being nominated. 

You can read the full press release here.

 

Where the senior care experience comes from

 

Stacey has worked in nursing homes, assisted living and memory care, hospitals, rehabilitation centers and independent living communities. She is a trained recreation therapist. That matters more than it sounds like it should.

When a family in Austin, Round Rock or Georgetown calls us after a hospital discharge or a fall, the way we respond comes from someone who has seen that moment from the inside, in nearly every setting where it can happen. We know what the hospital will say. We know what the rehab community will say. We know what nobody tells you.

 

The work outside the agency

 

Stacey also spends a lot of her time on things that have nothing to do with our client list:

• Community Educator for the Alzheimer’s Association, and a supporter of the Williamson County Walk Committee
• Treasurer of the Adult Protective Services Advisory Board
• Community Awareness Chair for the Aging Services Council
• Co-Facilitator of the Williamson County Health Resource networking group
• Member of the National Aging in Place Coalition, with involvement in Age Friendly Austin, Healthy Williamson County, the Williamson Collab Action Group and the Regional Dementia Support Coalition for the Capital Area

She is also President of Round Rock High School’s Project Grad program. We have questions about her calendar.

 

Why that matters if you live in Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville or Hutto

 

When you are sorting out care for a parent, the hard part is rarely a shortage of services. It is knowing which one fits, who to call, and what happens next. Someone who teaches dementia education, sits on advisory boards and works the local networks either knows the answer or knows who does. That shows up in every care plan we build across North Austin, Round Rock, Georgetown and Williamson and Travis counties.

 

The recognition so far

 

In 2025, A Place At Home – North Austin received the Activated Insights Best of Home Care Provider of Choice and Employer of Choice awards. We were also named Best Senior Care Service in the 2024 and 2025 Best of Round Rock awards. Those came from clients, caregivers and neighbors. This finalist nod looks at the community work behind the care families receive at home, and we are glad someone noticed.

Thank you to everyone who has trusted us with their families, and to the caregivers who show up every day.

 

If you are caring for a parent right now

 

If you are in North Austin, Round Rock, Georgetown or nearby and you are not sure what comes next, call us at 512-521-3010. We offer non-medical personal care, companionship, dementia support, respite care, transportation and care coordination, and we will help you figure out the right level of help even if that is not us.

You can learn more about Stacey at SeniorKareExpert.com and about our team at A Place At Home – North Austin.

 

I hear a version of this question almost every week from families in Round Rock and North Austin who’ve just gotten a loved one home from the hospital: “She’s got home health coming, so we should be covered, right?”

I understand exactly why people think that. The words sound similar. The paperwork uses them almost interchangeably. But home health and home care are not the same thing, and the gap between them is exactly where a lot of recoveries go sideways.

 

What Home Health Actually Is

 

Home health is medical care, ordered by a doctor, delivered by licensed clinical staff: nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists. It’s typically short-term, tied to a specific medical need, and scheduled in visits. A nurse might come twice a week to check a wound and manage medications. A physical therapist might come three times a week to work on mobility goals. These visits are valuable, and they’re often essential to recovery.

They’re also brief. A typical home health visit runs thirty to sixty minutes. Multiply that out, and even a relatively intensive home health schedule covers a few hours a week, out of the 168 hours in that week.

 

What Home Care Actually Is

 

Home care is the non-medical, ongoing support that fills every hour home health doesn’t cover. It’s the help with bathing, dressing, and mobility. It’s meal preparation, medication reminders, and transportation to appointments. It’s someone present to notice if something seems off today compared to yesterday. It’s not ordered by a doctor and it’s not billed to Medicare the way home health typically is, but it’s very often the difference between a recovery that goes well and one that doesn’t.

 

Why the Confusion Happens in the First Place

 

Part of the reason this mix-up is so common is that home health is the piece that gets ordered formally, with paperwork, a physician’s signature, and often Medicare coverage attached to it. It feels official in a way that makes families assume it’s comprehensive. Home care, by contrast, is something a family has to seek out and arrange on their own, which makes it feel optional, even when it’s the piece doing most of the actual day-to-day work of keeping someone safe.

There’s also a funding piece that adds to the confusion. Medicare typically covers home health because it’s medical and time-limited. Home care is usually paid for differently: privately, through long-term care insurance, through a Medicaid waiver program, or in some cases through VA benefits for eligible veterans. Families sometimes assume that if Medicare isn’t paying for something, it must not be necessary. That’s backwards. It just means the payment structure is different, not that the need is smaller.

 

Where the Gap Actually Shows Up

 

Here’s the part that catches families off guard. Home health visits are, by design, brief check-ins focused on a specific clinical task. They are not built to catch a fall that happens at 11pm. They are not built to notice that someone’s gotten quietly confused about which pills go with breakfast. They are not built to make sure someone actually eats something today, or gets dressed, or makes it to a follow-up appointment across town.

That’s not a flaw in home health. It’s simply not what it’s designed to do. The gap is structural, not a failure of any particular nurse or therapist.

So when families assume “home health has us covered,” what they often mean is “someone with medical training is coming by sometimes.” That’s true, and it matters. But it leaves the other 165 or so hours of the week unaccounted for, and that’s exactly the stretch of time when falls happen, medications get missed, and isolation creeps in.

 

How a Local Care Team Bridges This

 

This is the role our care coordination team plays in North Austin. We’re not a substitute for home health, and we don’t try to be. We coordinate directly with the nurses and therapists already involved in a recovery, and we fill the hours around their visits: helping with the exercises they’ve prescribed, making sure medications are taken on schedule, watching for the early warning signs that don’t wait for a scheduled visit to show up.

For families in North Austin, Round Rock, and Georgetown, that coordination happens locally, with caregivers who know the area and a team that’s actually reachable when something comes up, not a call center somewhere else.

 

The Question Worth Asking Before Discharge

 

If your parent is coming home from a hospital stay or rehab facility and home health has been ordered, the question worth asking isn’t “are we covered.” It’s “who’s watching during the hours home health isn’t here.” If the honest answer is “we’ll figure it out,” that’s worth addressing before discharge day, not after the first fall.

Call us at 512-521-3010, and we’ll walk through exactly what coverage looks like across the full week, not just the visits.