Why Does the Concierge Nearly Normal Family Melt Down Over the Holidays ?

December 16, 2017

Many concierge aging families are healthy or a nearly normal family. But discovering they must care for a parent can force them into tailspin. When the parent figure in the family begins to suffer the losses of aging, a filial crisis occurs.

What’s that-? That is accepting your parent in the here and now .When a Mom or Dad is no longer the north stars they were to the family, midlife adult children need to learn to learn to balance parental love and duty with independence. These midlife kids must create a two-way relationship instead of the parent sending, love, money and nurture only one way. This can throw adult children in a nearly normal family into a parental panic.

Nurturing and care have always been a one-way street – ending with them. Were they selfish – no? That’s what good parents do- nurture their children through all the stages of life. However, this new stage takes a two-way street.

The healthy nearly normal family is also thrown off balance by a shock to the system- someone has to replace the Queen or King bee. The person who took the lead role on the family stage has not shown up or forgets their lines. On the holidays they don’t decorate the Christmas tree, forget the words to the blessing on Chanukah, the recipe for Latkes or their famous Christmas sugar cookies.

Now the adult kids must make the Christmas cookies, Latkes, lead the Chanukah prayers or host Christmas. Many are reluctant to step up to the plate, take over the work of a ritual- be the head of the family

At this giant pause in family play, the family system, even in the normal family must face the loss of control in the system because the parents or parent figures usually have that control. When they can no longer manage on their own, or function as the main gear or guide that moves the family system forward, even the normal spins out of control.

Will Entitled Aging Clients Holiday Calls Transform Your Bottom Line?

October 31, 2017

The holiday season is coming and geriatric care managers will get the most calls of any time in the year. Why is the “jolly holiday” an adult child ” Blue Blue Christmas “? They come home needing celebration and instead find Mom or Dad needing care.

Many of these desperate calls will be concierge clients who can afford you. These are the new client’s you want to take on. Adding concierge customer’s services to your geriatric care management agency transforms your agency into profitable service.

Why- a geriatric care manager is a powerful health care concierge, just like the new concierge medical services.

This is a captivating new selling point to potential GCM clients in the top 10% income brackets and make those desperate calls next month.These clients can pay long-term care geriatric care management and private duty home care.

You offer highly personalized aging parent care they must have.

A geriatric care manager is a highly skilled professional who acts like a personal assistant to the aging family.They demand that.

GCM’s are like a concierge at a 5-star hotel there to serve the family by solving their caregiving and family care problems and making elder care more seamless.But there is a catch.

Concierge clients take highly skilled clinicians. Those caregiving and family dynamic problems they call about this holiday are ultra complex.A concierge client may be entitled, narcissistic, demanding, irrational, care adverse as the parent did not care for them, part of a highly dysfunctional family system- yet want all clinical care to be seamless.

Join me Wednesday, November 8 and learn how to come to the rescue of Concierge Entitled families who find coal in their stockings.

Ten Clinical Steps to Tame the Turbulence of the Holiday Season in The Entitled Concierge Family

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Give frantic entitled adult children hope when they call desperately call this holiday

Learn the 10 Steps to tame holiday turmoil from Cathy Cress MSW, the author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management.

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Wednesday, November 8 @11am Pacific Time

2pm CST/ 4pm EST / 8pm LONDON / 5am SYDNEY

How Can Geriatric Care Managers Can Contract With Wealth Management Dept. of Banks ?

October 23, 2017

Wealth management banks are increasingly using geriatric care managers to serve their clients.

Bank of America’s U.S. Trust and Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo Private Bank, Morgan Stanley, and Northern Trust and some of these trust departments turned wealth managers that use or partner with care managers. They serve Concierge clients with assets over and above a million dollars and want to work with geriatric care managers to lighten their own load. A care manager can handle the health care and psychosocial while their handle their area of expertise, financial management of client’s assets.

When you market to wealth managers, you have to show them the benefits of using a geriatric care manager.

Show them the BENEFIT of your GCM Service to the wealth manager including you as a geriatric care manager will:

Do In-depth assessment initial of aging clients health and psychosocial status
Assess client’s level of competency to make financial decisions.
Collaborate to create a long-term care plan for clients who wish to stay at home and TO needs to plan accordingly for the cost of care.
Collaborate to create a long-term care plan for clients who wish to move or need to move to a higher level of care
access community resources for their parent’s care.
Monitor the status of an older client and report back to the family and financial
Advise when a higher level of care is needed
Monitor weekly so problems not become a crisis and are solved preventatively
Organize community resources for clients so have highest quality of health care and quality of life
Make clients feel engaged with a health and social services concierge who will help the trust offer guide them to the BEST care.

Make sure the wealth manager knows a professional geriatric care manager is:
visiting/monitoring
Advocating for the clients
sending a monthly report on client’s health/social situation
Emailing reports and updates on client
delivering prevention rather than crisis management
Managing clients with mental health problems
Managing adult siblings who disrupt older clients care through sibling fights
Managing dysfunctional families
Facilitating family meetings to come to an agreement about care for elder with dysfunctional families

For help in setting up a Concierge Care Management Service and Marketing to clients that will refer to you sign up for my 4 hour Creating a Concierge /VIP GCM Client Services series where I will show you how to
- Identify VIP and Concierge Clients and, What They Want from a GCM,
- Develop Products for VIP Concierge Clients,
- Market and Sell &Identify Third Party Resources to find VIP Concierge Clients,
- Teach Staff to Deliver GCM Products Services to VIP Concierge / VIP Clients

How to Assess the Caregiver and Avoid Hospital Readmission

October 1, 2017

Assessing the Family Caregiver is a relatively new but crucial concept for geriatric care managers and professionals in aging.As geriatric care managers and aging professional, we are health and social services oriented. For almost 3 decades we have assessed the care receiver for problems with function, social connection, and psychological issues. If we suspect depression we have completed that screen. If our client plans to move, has cultural needs and preferences, exhibits signs of dementia, need ways to improve quality of life or a spiritual connection, we have assessed the care receiver for those problems.

All our assessments have left out the major fact – care is an exchange. To receive care, the patient/client usually needs a family caregiver to give or supervise it. That family caregiver is the glue that holds it all together and his or her inner bond begins to break with the strain of caring.

Other countries have seen what the US has yet to grasp. In the United Kingdom, a seminal law passed in 1995 called the Recognition and Services Act , which provided British caregivers a statutory right to request an assessment at the same time that a frail elder or adult with disabilities is assessed.

So developing a caregiver assessment is critical, especially in this era of penalties to hospitals for readmission. The caregiver is the key to keeping an older person in the community and not back in the hospital. If they are not trained, have physical problems that inhibit caring, find some tasks, like changing adult diapers uncomfortable, have no car to pick up meds or drive to the doctor’s follow-up an appointment, you have a problem and probably a readmission.

Learn how to do a caregiver assessment along with a care receiver assessment.This will help you keep your aging client both out of the hospital and potentially out of inappropriate placement in a skilled nursing facility. Plus you will learn just not how to assess caregiver burnout but be able to create a care plan that will help your family caregiver have a better quality of life while they giver better care to their loved one. Read the chapter ” Assessing the Caregiver ” in my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family, Jones and Bartlett. The price has just been cut in half to make it more affordable for the practitioner.

Watching Harvey’s Devistation-Do You Have a 2017 Emergency Plan for Your Elder Care Agency ?

August 31, 2017

Do you have procedures for an emergency at your Aging Life, Geriatric Care Management or private duty home care agency?

The ability of an agency to function despite an emergency is critical. The 2017 hurricane season has brought us the horror of Harvey with a category 4 storm that has wreaked never before seen flooding. So far crews in Texas have found the bodies of 31 victims of Harvey’s wrath and warned on Wednesday that the number of dead would almost certainly soar as water levels across much of the Houston area start to recede.

In the US.Katrina’s devastation in New Orleans led to new Federal Rules that forced a wide range of health care providers to create emergency plans which created better emergency plans in nursing homes. This brought plans and safety drills but plans had never included the almost biblical flooding that is happening in Houston right now.Ben Taub hospital even with an emergency plan was so flooded it had a difficult time getting patients out, although, in the end, every patient was moved to safety

So in light of Harvey- Does your agency have an emergency plan?

Informal procedures work in a start up care management business but what if the solo practitioner is ill and out?

If illness, accident, some other unforeseen event overtakes an owner or manager, no emergency procedures can be suicide in an emergency, not to mention liability to your elderly clients.

Katrina left New Orleans GCM’s, desperately scrambling to care for their clients in hotels as the floodwater rose. They were and left to re-build their business again, which took years.

Every geriatric care professional needs a formal, written backup plan that dictates action, should a disaster or emergency arise.

It ‘s necessary to assess your company’s risk of temporary or permanent service disruption if a disaster or emergency is experienced. This may seem an overwhelming task at first, but when you break it down into pieces, it becomes workable.

Learn about preparing for emergencies how you can prepare you, your clients and staff for disasters and absences of key personnel. Preparing for these ever growing emergencies, work wide is now in Liz Barlowe’s chapter Preparing for Emergencies in the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management.

Get the new Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition now out on Kindle

How Can Geriatric Care Managers Can Contract With Wealth Management Dept. of Banks ?

For help in setting up a Concierge Care Management Service and Marketing to clients that will refer to you sign up for my 4 hour Creating a Concierge /VIP GCM Client Services series where I will show you how to

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