Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Do You Need Sales Experience to be a Geriatric Care Manager?

Doing a successful client intake takes two Aging life /geriatric care management skills- knowledge and experience in  geriatric care management and something that few aging life care managers have – a sales background.

Let’s touch on the first. All geriatric care managers must have a degree in the health care field such as nursing or social work. An advanced degree is optimum. Care managers also need a background in family therapy- specifically the aging family system. You rarely work with just the elderly or disabled client. Most of your work is with the family system-adult children, the older person and the extended family. That takes knowing family therapy.
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Doing a successful client intake takes two Aging life /geriatric care management skills- knowledge and experience in  geriatric care management and something that few aging life care managers have – a sales background.

Let’s touch on the first. All geriatric care managers must have a degree in the healthcare field such as nursing or social work. An advanced degree is optimum. Care managers also need a background in family therapy- specifically the aging family system. You rarely work with just the elderly or disabled client. Most of your work is with the family system-adult children, the older person, and the extended family. That takes knowing family therapy.

But here is a deal breaker , most geriatric care managers did not know they must have. You need a sales background to do an intake and get the client in your services.

You started a private aging life business to help older people but in order to successfully help them, yourself and your own family, ( kids need braces- you need to pay your mortgage) you have to know how to sell your product to make money. That takes knowing and feeling comfortable with sales.

But here is a deal breaker, most care managers did not know they must have. You need a sales background to do an intake and get the client in your services.

Sales classes for social workers and nurses and few and far between.  Do you need help to market master sales and run a profitable care management business.?

Build or Rebuild (remember those 3 Little Pigs) Your Aging Life or Care Management Business So the Wolf Can’t Blow It Down                                                         

Join me Wednesday, October 17 Pacific Time
and learn to build or rebuild your business client information into a moneymaking stream

 

In this FREE  1-hour webinar, you will learn how to choose:

  • Reach this target concierge audience
  • Design products that exactly meet their needs
  • Obtain adult children’s buy-in           
  • Use marketing that will make them choose you
  • Get the contract signed with ease
  • Create a brand that tells concierge clients they will get Four Seasons Service

 

If you really want to wire your business to swiftly brings clients to your caseload and a bigger balance to your bank, then you won’t want to miss this webinar 

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How Can a Care Manager Help Elder Die Without a Will , as Aretha Franklin Just Did?

Aretha Frankin Died without a will last week. Most of us have heard this. According to her lawyer, she was aware she needed to take care of this but ” never got around to it”. This leaves her estate liable for potentially millions of dollars of taxes and attorneys fees and a drawn-out timeline for her 4 sons to inherit the proceeds from her estate.

Could a really good care manager have convinced Ms. Frankilin to ” get around to it” . She was, as many have said, ” a force of nature” and a woman who would be hard to sway. But care managers specialize in working with VIP clients and the rich and famous, who are often highly difficult to work with, so she might have convinced that she needed to work with her attorney to this to protect her family and her estate.

But we will never know.

However, care managers can specialize in End of Life care and one of their jobs is to make sure their client has all their legal documents

Once the terminal diagnosis is known with an elderly client, the care manager who has added “end of life services” to their agency, is often the one who will initiate and guide advance care planning discussions. As difficult as these discussions may be, the burden on the family is significantly lessened if decisions about advance care planning are made before the client’s condition worsens.

Hopefully, this has already been done but many people put it off for fear of death. A recent study found that less than 50% of severely or terminally ill patients had an advance directive in their medical record.

Advance directives are legal documents that allow clients to make decisions about their health care and finances in advance of when they are not mentally or physically able to do so. These documents which must be signed, dated and witnessed naming another person to make decisions for you.

Your job as a care manager is the make sure the dying client has these documents:

 

If the client does not have these legal documents and wishes to create them, the Geriatric Care Manager will suggest that the documents be put in place with the oversight and consultation of an elder law attorney

Care Managers play a big role in end of life issues. They are their navigators through all five stages of dying, many times long before palliative care or hospice are called. Often GCM’s can help the family and client to bring in hospice or palliative care.

 The final passage through life can emotionally charged.  If the family is following a long labyrinth to the end, the blind alleys may be blocked by cultural, religious, and moral beliefs. Care managers can find an opening through this maze.  Money, family dynamics, and fear of dying can all explode a fraught crisis of care in dying. When the important end of life decisions need to be made, like Ms. Franklin’s will, the stress of the responsibility and the seriousness of the situation can break a wave of distress fear and anxiety over the “ whole family system” the dying elder. The geriatric care manager specializes in this whole family system.

 Proactive discussions and legal planning can help to reduce some of the potential pitfalls. Good legal guidance can also help clients like Aretha Franklin make better decisions, like making a will or a trust, and saving her family from adding to the burden of her death.

Consider getting this product with my GCM Operations Manual 

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