nurse care manager Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

How to Be Financially Literate to Grow a Geriatric Care Management Business and Avoid Failure

July 18, 2018

A financial projection may be mind-numbing to care managers who started this business with a great idea and a toolbox of care management skills. Beware– without tools to make money- your great idea of a private geriatric care management business may end up bankrupt.

Geriatric care managers need to understand revenue- how they make money to be financially to make a profit. Revenue does come from billing – but poor billing is very unprofitable billing. Money-losing billing is anything less than 85% of your client’s time. When you bill less than 85% you actually start losing money. Revenue is the high tide of money and is calculated by the number of client’s you serve, new client’s per month, number of clients canceling service. % of time billed (the goal is 85%) and what you charge for travel time.

Care managers can become more financially literate about making money by doing a financial projection over a three-year period. You can calculate the number of clients you need to make a profit when you will break even when you can hire new staff.

You can find out awesome facts before you open a care management business by doing this mind-numbing financial projection. Facts you can forecast are how much investment you will need for your business, what the cash flow consumed in the business will be, the number of client’s you need to make a profit and most of all when you will break even and rise above low tide– moving to the all-important high tide, through your excellent financial management and care management skills.

So use this financial decision tool of financial projection. Find it chapter 13 of the Handbook of Geriatric Care management 4th edition and watch youtube 5 Financial Projection below. Become a geriatric care manager with financial skills to make a Profit

Want to make serve the GCM market that will make you a profitable business? Join me for my free webinar, “Start and Run a Profitable Geriatric Care Business” on August 22. Learn how to transform your GCM entrepreneurial dream into a money-making business with 5 profit driven steps Learn more.

Care Manager’s Business Can Go Bankrupt Without Understanding Bad Cash Flow

July 14, 2018

According to Small Business Administration (SBA) nearly 66 percent of small businesses will survive their first two years.

Do not open your doors and then shut them because you did not understand cash flow as well as care management.

No matter how great your aging life or geriatric care management business model is, you can’t survive if you can’t manage your company’s cash flow. According to a U.S. Bank study, 82 percent of business failures are due to poor cash management. Most geriatric care managers started a business with a great idea- care management. They did not open a business understanding of cash flow or its business killing dangers

What is cash flow? Cash flow is the money that is moving (flowing) in and out of your business in a month. If not enough money is flowing in from billable care management customers, you can’t make payroll or pay your rent and other bills. If more money is coming in than is going out, you are in a “positive cash flow” situation and you have enough to pay your bills. If more cash is going out than coming in, you are in danger of being overdrawn, and you will need to find money to cover your overdrafts.

Even if you’re a brilliant care management entrepreneur in every other way, you must stay squarely focused on managing your company’s cash flow to avoid putting your business in imminent danger.
Businesses die from prolonged periods of negative cash flow:
spending more in a month than the business is taking in. 96% of small business fail in 10 Years because they can’t pay their bills or cash flow problems

One of the fastest cash-flow killers – results from unpaid invoices from clients. If you aren’t being proactive about collecting payments from your clients, you could be on your way to a dangerous cash-flow situation.
Businesses go bankrupt from prolonged periods of negative cash flow: spending more in a month than the business is taking in. Care Managers have to watch cash flow and the results, in the beginning, are taking no salary yourself, hiring no help and keeping the second job until you can get enough clients and cash flow.Find out more in the YouTube from My Geriatric Care 1 Channel.

Stop -Before Starting Geriatric Care Management Business – Do a Competition Survey

July 12, 2018

If you are thinking of starting private geriatric care management, a competition survey is critical to decide if you can make a profit in this business

You are surveying who your competition is in the geographic area you want to serve. You are discovering if you can achieve market share in the area you choose to serve.

You want to create a survey that tracks the individual care manager’s in your services area, and find out what their hourly fee is, do they now include homecare, what geriatric care management services does each GCM offer.

This will also tell you if the local market is too saturated for your new business to compete with the other care management agencies. It will test whether you can make a profit- can you make money, pay your bills, actually go to the next step while doing good?

Fewer businesses are failing in 2018 for many reasons. One is the tendency of would-be entrepreneurs to evaluate business opportunities more carefully before taking the plunge, by doing a competition survey. Potential company founders are more selective than they used to be. This means fewer marginal companies – businesses whose products are not needed or whose markets are already being served by other businesses – are being formed. As a result, the average American company is stronger and more likely to survive than it once was. This means doing a competition survey to find out if your product care management is really needed in your market and are too many geriatric care management competitors, in your area for you to successfully compete as a new business.

Learn how to do your market assessment and competition survey ( or secret shopper) in the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition and discover whether you have enough customers in your area to start your care management business. Don’t Guess and fail.

Feds Discover” Nursing Homes” Gaming the System with Inadequate” Nurses” Aides-NY Times Sunday

July 10, 2018

The New York Times reports that nursing homes have been been gaming the Medicare system, disguising that they are terribly understaffed, with not enough nurses and nurses’ aides, to call themselves “ Nursing Homes “ leaving resident alone without care on a regular basis .

The front-page story published this past Sunday, reported skilled nursing homes on weekends are not “skilled” and barely have enough staff to tend to the patients. One man who cares for his wife is quoted in the story that on weekends, the facility it is almost like a ghost town.

What the article refers to is staff ratios This is the number of staff per patient needed to care for patients who need a high level of care from the nurses and aides, to change diapers, feed them, dress them all the activities of living these patients cannot do themselves.

What the article alleges Medicare just discovered that the nursing homes have been lying for years on about staff ratios. Kaiser Heath News just reported that data from nursing homes coming from payroll tells the real truth about inadequate staffing to care for these very disabled patients

97 years old woman suffers move into retirement home while sitting on her chair in hallway; furniture stands around her

The payroll data that proves these severe staffing shortages leading to dangerous patient care comes come from daily payroll records Medicare only recently began gathering and publishing from more than 14,000 nursing homes, as required by the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Medicare previously had been rating each facility’s staffing levels based on the homes’ own unverified reports.

The government has been a party to this by coming up with their star rating, giving five stars like a Michelin rating ,to what they considered great nursing homes. But these stars were not verified by inspections on a regular basis or payroll records, and staffing was self-reported.

.So, by checking payroll records of staff the real truth came out- nursing homes are dangerous places to leave loved ones who need high levels of care. This is not like having a poor meal at a five-star restaurant. This is like putting your mother in a place that the government says has great care and having her die of neglect.

6 Activities for a Care Manager to Bring Intellectual Quality of life to Older People?

July 9, 2018

Care Manager Nina Herndon, the national expert of elder quality of life, cites in her chapter on Quality of Life, in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management a quote from the aging visionary Bill Thomas MD in his book, “What Are Old People For” .Thomas says the plague of so many elders,

especially in nursing homes is- loneliness, helplessness, and boredom because their environment is empty of companionship, intimacy, self-direction and meaningful activity. Care Managers can fill this void with quality of life. One way to do this is

Intellectual Quality of Life activities that engage older person mentally

Hobbies
Learning
Brain aerobics
any form of creativity

Here are 6 ideas for seniors who live at home or in an institution.

For seniors who are independent.

For seniors who wish to travel again but need support to arrange a trip-Work with a senior travel agency to have the elder plan a trip that the elder would love to take but never did. Arrange for senior to take a class on planning travel and to plan the trip Help them go on line

Games checkers dominos, puzzles, simple card games with a deck of cards with whales on them if they like the sea or more complicated games like bridge. Join local games” meet up” on parlor games Here is an example where I live.
Help client join a local book club with the kind of literature he likes to read (non-fiction- fiction – romance? )

Help the client join a book club at the local library.
Help client join a Lifelong Learning Osher group near you with intellectual activities they enjoy book groups, Current Events, Cosmology, Shakespeare – whatever they love to learn or learn again.For seniors who live at a higher level of care
1. If a senior is homebound sign them up for Senior Center Without Walls and let them make a choice of what classes they want to take
1. For a client who cannot get out anymore and is a birder, make birdseed ornaments and hang outside the window where the client can see. Take pictures of the birds that visit the hung ornaments. Get a bird field guide for the area and help identify birds who visit the ornaments to feed then if interested have the older person keep a journal of the birds they spot. If they are interested help them participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count

Care Manager’s Business Can Go Bankrupt Without Understanding Bad Cash Flow

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