Plan, purchase, prepare, or serve meals to patients or other family members, according to prescribed diets.

“Plan, purchase, prepare, or serve meals to patients or other family members, according to prescribed diets.” is a core task performed by Home Health Aides. Among the occupation's 15 rated tasks, workers place it 9th by importance (#7 most important). About 89% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Assist individuals with special needs. in Assisting and Caring for Others

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T1.

How AI is actually used on this kind of task

The Anthropic Economic Index observes how people actually use AI on tasks like this one across millions of real conversations.

• 0.003% share of AI-use records mapped to this task
• 95% of interactions still needed a human in the loop

Observed AI use describes people choosing to use AI as a tool on this kind of task today. It is augmentation and assistance, not a measure of jobs replaced.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Maintain records of patient care, condition, progress, or problems to report and discuss observations with supervisor or case manager. · importance 4.5
• Provide patients with help moving in and out of beds, baths, wheelchairs, or automobiles and with dressing and grooming. · importance 4.4
• Bathe patients. · importance 4.3
• Administer prescribed oral medications, under the written direction of physician or as directed by home care nurse or aide, and ensure patients take their medicine. · importance 4.3
• Care for patients by changing bed linens, washing and ironing laundry, cleaning, or assisting with their personal care. · importance 4.2
• Entertain, converse with, or read aloud to patients to keep them mentally healthy and alert. · importance 4.1
• Care for children who are disabled or who have sick or disabled parents. · importance 4.0
• Check patients' pulse, temperature, and respiration. · importance 3.9
• Provide patients and families with emotional support and instruction in areas such as caring for infants, preparing healthy meals, living independently, or adapting to disability or illness. · importance 3.9
• Accompany clients to doctors' offices or on other trips outside the home, providing transportation, assistance, and companionship. · importance 3.8
• Perform a variety of duties as requested by client, such as obtaining household supplies or running errands. · importance 3.7
• Change dressings. · importance 3.6
• Direct patients in simple prescribed exercises or in the use of braces or artificial limbs. · importance 3.5
• Massage patients or apply preparations or treatments, such as liniment, alcohol rubs, or heat-lamp stimulation. · importance 3.3

See all tasks on the Home Health Aides page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27) Anthropic
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-4245,
  title  = {Plan, purchase, prepare, or serve meals to patients or other family members, according to prescribed diets.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27); “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-4245}
}