geriatric care manager Archives ⋆ Page 3 of 141 ⋆ Cathy Cress

Innappropriate Threat of Placement =Caregiver Assessment

September 30, 2019

When a Caregiver is so Overwhelmed that A SNF is a Choice but a Very Bad Choice

If the family is so overwhelmed by the care that they are considering placement, this threat should trigger the GCM to do a caregiver assessment immediately, found in the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management If the GCM is called to relocate an older person and the underlying cause seems to be caregiver burnout, this can be another trigger for a caregiver assessment. If caregiver abuse is suspected, a caregiver assessment is a critical immediate tool. This is a situation where the GCM must contact Adult Protective Services, following their own state’s laws. Elder abuse can be triggered by caregiver stress in some situations. Depression that reaches a clinical level in a caregiver can be predictive of elder abuse of an elderly client can prompt a GCM to do a caregiver assessment. You should also do a geriatric depression scale at the same time. Use the GDS and the caregiver assessment to help both the caregiver and the care receiver at the same time.

Mrs. Handy has Two Dads in Her Head

Mrs. Handy our caregiver in many other blogs is about to place her Dad because she is besieged by so many other stressors. Her own health is deteriorating because she cannot get any sleep, due to her Dad going to bed so late and her inability to rise above her old self when her Dad was 40 and she was 19 and what he said she did. Now he is 70, very impaired with vascular dementia, incontinent and she needs to be who she is in the here and now a woman of 40, caring for an impaired Dad in her 70’s. She needs to set the boundary of him going to be early. She needs help in getting rid of the old parent in her head and putting the 70-year-old demented incontinent parent before her. This is what a geriatric care manager can do for her to help avoid unnecessary placement.

Should Seniors be Able to Cruise-Even With Limiting Disabilities ?

September 25, 2019

Midwest ALCA Conference Gem

I just spoke at the ALCA Midwest Chapter Conference. I had never been in Indianapolis and only driven through Indiana when I was young and crisscrossed the coasts many times, barreling fast through that state. What I found there besides wonderful people from the midwest and ALCA, was an extraordinary nurse and rendering a service that I thought all care managers should know about.

I now specialize in quality of life and believe that every elder should have joy in their life and any age or level of disability. If they want to go on cruises they should be able to go. But cruise lines find elders who may be incontinent, have mobility problems and confusion -a difficult task for a shipboard crew and other passengers.

Elite Supported Travel Is Extraordinary

But I had dinner with this extraordinary RN who had the answer to elder cruise dilemma’s. Kathy Speer Shoaf specializes in organizing cruises for elders with medical or mental issues. Kathy runs Elite Supported Travel and organizes travel with cruise lines like Holland American, for elders who would have difficulties on any cruise

Kathy is a Travel Expert with 20+ years of clinical and management experience in Geriatric, Neurology, Rehabilitation and senior housing as an RN and ATP (Adaptive Technology Professional). She realized after years of counseling with families and clients that the QUEST to enjoy life “Should Never Have to Stop”. Her ability to overcome Fear and Anxiety about travel… Makes “Bucket-List Dreams come true. Her professional career has allowed her to be a public speaker, CEU educator, clinical consultant, and passionate travel advocate.

Should Seniors be Able to Cruise Even With a Limiting Diagnosis?

Kathy is uniquely qualified to understand travel challenges and create rational solutions. Her passion is to deliver “Travel opportunities so that everyone can ENJOY their Life”, even when accessibility challenges and clinical issues exist. All seniors and those afflicted with limiting diagnosis still deserve to be able to fulfill their dreams if it is a cruise.

The cruise industry has always attracted the older generation, who typically have more disposable income and time in their autumn years to spend on a lengthy and leisurely cruise, but have aging issues that are hard to meet on the high seas. Kathy Speer has the answer to that problem. So, care managers and senior agencies who work with elders who want to take a cruise should put Kathy in their continuum of care and contact her right away. She is also a delightful dinner companion.

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

September 24, 2019

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 in excel that tracks the individual care manager’s in your services area, and find out what their hourly fee is, do they include homecare, what geriatric care management services does each GCM offer, do they answer in two rings, how is their customer service, are they on call 24 hrs a day, are their care managers certified.

Use a staff member or outside person to be a secret shopper and make the calls, as you are doing market research. You must find someone who feels comfortable impersonating someone else. You need to give that person a customer story- they are a daughter looking for services in your area and calling around and a description of the fake mother and her problems

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 2019 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 sizing and competition survey and discover whether you have enough customers in your area to start your care management business. Don’t Guess and fail.

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Caregiver Assessment- When The Caregiver Loses Sense of Self

September 22, 2019

One Homeostatic System

When you assess an older client with a family caregiver, you really have two clients. The needs of the family caregiver are different than the needs of the care receiver and the geriatric care manager or aging professional must differentiate those needs to make sure the care receiver’s functional and psychosocial needs are met. The care receiver and the family caregiver are one homeostatic system encompassing the whole aging family. To keep that family healthy and whole, in the middle of swirling care crisis, the care manager must first recognize that there are multiple clients including the person who gives or supervises care. In a health care insult, family members who give care are often referred to by the inanimate wooden term “ resources”. They have also been referred to as “ informants “.

Stripping Caregivers Personhood

This stripping of personhood denudes them of their status as individuals and melts them into the caregivers, thus breeds professional ignorance, like the crowd who watched the emperor with no clothes. We are blind to caregiver’s humanity and thus their own needs.

Seld-Esteem Vanishes With Caregiving

Many family caregivers lose their self-esteem because they fail at so many other parts of their lives when their whole life seems to be taken up by caregiving. They do not get vacations as the care-receiver does not take a break from illness and aging. Often there are few others to give them respite. Caregivers, often they just do not know where to find help or even ask for it. If family caregivers have children and husbands, they are often squeezed between their needs, the needs of the care receiver – thus have no room for their own needs. They are breathless and slogging forward.

Find out more in the YouTube from My Geriatric Care 1 Channel.

Can a Care Manager’s Business Can Go Bankrupt With Bad Cash Flow ?

September 20, 2019

According to the Small Business Administration, 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, pay yourself or 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.

LEARN How To Be Financially Literate With Your New GCM Business