nurse navigator Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Do You Give Away the Store When You Do An Intake?

October 31, 2018

Do you make this mistake with a client inquiry? When you get a request for and intake, over the phone, do you then drive to the client’s home to do the intake- without a deposit and contract? What can happen when you do this.

Aging Life care manager Sally Sunshine received an inquiry call and drove an hour to see the client. After spending two hours explaining her services, doing a geriatric assessment then asking for a deposit and signed contract the older gentleman said he could not afford her services and would not sign the contract at that time. The Aging Life care manager came up empty-handed after hours of driving, doing a 2 hours geriatric assessment with no new case, contract or deposit for all her time and expert effort.

How do you avoid traveling two hours, spending 3 or more hours with a client and not getting the case or making the sale?

You do the inquiry over two phone calls first one offering a free complimentary consultation, and then making the sale and asking for the contract and the deposit in the second call. You use Adobe and Pay Pal to get the deposit and contract within hours. You do not drive to the client’s home without getting a signed contract deposit – first.

Join me in my new Webinar

5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

During the busiest season for care management referrals-

You Will Learn:

How to sell services during telephone intake, to desperate adult child callers
How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
- Sign Up

Are You Marketing Private Care Management to The Concierge Family- Who Can Afford You?

August 10, 2018

Who is Your Market in an Aging Life or geriatric care management business? The Rich and Famous people who are your concierge clients. This is why you need to serve that top 10%. Demand and not need determines the success of an eldercare business like aging life or geriatric care manager business. This fundamental fact of life must be taken into consideration when developing a business plan for a for-profit, fee-based, Geriatric care management business.

The target market for a private geriatric care management business is not the 65 million families who need those concierge care management services, but the much smaller subset of those families who can afford to hire a GCM or aging life care manager, are willing to pay for the services that GCMs and can actually find their way to you.

This subset really represents the top 10% of the economic spectrum and more precisely the top 1% who actually held onto its share of national wealth in the 2008 economic crisis, and may have even gained a bit.

Meanwhile, the share of national wealth held by the bottom 90% fell to 25% after the Wall St and Housing collapse and these elders are tragically not the market for geriatric care managers because they cannot afford the service.

Whether you are a nurse care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, geriatric care manager , aging life care manager , any of the alphabet soup of care management names, if you have a private geriatric care management business, you can only make money and thrive as a business by marketing selling and be signing up the top 10% elder client.

Bob OToole MA ,long time geriatric care manager,wrote a highly researched chapter in the latest edition of Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition Private Revenue Sources for the Fee-Based Care Manager- Need Vs Demand in the Elder Care Market which show aging life and geriatric care manager why you need these 10% elders and their Families as customers.

Learn 5 critical success steps to start and run a profitable, GCM business, including marketing to Concierge clients, from Cathy Cress, the author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management now in its 4^th edition. Sign Up Now

Sign up for this limited enrollment webinar that will teach you to sidestep the 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses and fail within the first 18 months.

See you there.

Cathy Cress MSW

Do You Have an Aging Life or GCM Ethical Dilemma of Serving Wealthy Entitled Clients?

August 4, 2017

Targeting concierge clients puts geriatric care managers in a double bind. As a social worker, nurse or health professional practicing aging life or geriatric care management, the catch 22 you fall into is offering limited access to care management. Serving only the upper 10% was not part of our training. It was not part of our social belief system that all members of the community should have access to social and health care resources.

Restricting access to aging life or care management impacts 90% of older people’s ability to reach their full potential, negatively affecting their quality of life and further beats down unpaid family caregivers

But aging life or geriatric care manager chose to run a for profit business that depends on the top 10%.

Thus a paradoxical situation where geriatric care managers find themselves with contradictory goals.

Limiting access to geriatric care management to the upper 10% leads most Aging Life or geriatric care managers to an ethical dilemma. Should we limit resources?

The physician of the 19th & 20th century treated all patients rich or poor and did not have a business model but a caring model. Today’ managed care physicians see everyone on Medicare, although many do not take Medicare because of the low payments. Access to the physician diminishes even more with the advent of the concierge physician, who uses a business model to only treat those elders who can pay privately, which ends up being the upper 10%

Most nurses and social workers who are aging life or geriatric care managers came to the field with inner core beliefs that health care should be available to all elders, yet they chose to start a business.They had a caring model. So here ‘s the rub.

That business cannot prosper if the aging life or geriatric care manager does not have long term concierge clients who can pay for it. The federal government does not fund the profession, so elders have limited access. Should you be part of this?

Here is the ethical dilemma. It turns out that you must serve clients long term to make your aging life or geriatric care management thrive.

Learn more about how to solve this double bind.

Join my latest free webinar

Cathy Cress MSW, Author of Handbook of Geriatric Care Management- 4th edition. Webinar Series
Upcoming Webinar
Learn The 5 Steps to Reach the Concierge Client
August 23, 2017 11:00 -12:00 PST
Discover how to transform your GCM entrepreneurial dream into a profitable reality with 5 key marketing steps learn more and get the details
Overcome the double bind of your caring model and learn how to care and make money
Create a marketing strategy and messages that attract concierge clients
Reach this target audience
Design products that exactly meet their needs
Obtain adult children’s buy-in
Use words that will make them choose you
Get care staff they will like and not fire
Get the contract signed with ease

Sign -up for my free webinar

Are You Marketing Private Care Management to The Concierge Family- Who Can Afford You?

June 29, 2017

How is a Geriatric Care Manager Like a Good Poker Player?

June 9, 2017

A Care Planner has to have a genius for innovation. You do not have to be Steve Jobs but you must be able to take a complex problem in a family and come up with a really creative way to solve that problem.This is a geriatric care management tool that is hard to learn to use.You not only have to know your resources in the community and the family you serve but be able to shuffle them like a hand of cards and like a good poker player, come up with a hand that really wins for the family.

Ms. Full Charge our trusty Wonder Woman care manager/ geriatric social worker has come up with a totally innovative way to help the Sterling family who was stuck between the needs of the daughter and the unstated needs of the aging mother.

RESOURCES FOR THE STERLING FAMILY:

Financial Planning Resources

The discussion around financing Mrs. Sterling’s long-term care needs is one that Jane would prefer to avoid. Mrs. Sterling owns her own home worth $700,000, as well as having another $800,000 in savings. Her income is ample to cover her current expenses but in order to pay for additional care, Mrs. Sterling would have to “dip into” her principal assets. Mrs. Sterling has not been willing to do that since, after all, she and her husband worked very hard so that they would not have to be dependent on others. Additionally, Mrs. Sterling wants to be able to leave a legacy to her grandchildren and make sure her son Michael will always be taken care of. Just thinking about how she will approach this topic with her mother contributes to Jane’s procrastination. Understanding this dynamic, the care manager customizes the recommendations.

Mrs. Sterling admits she can no longer take care of her finances. Her eldest son had stepped in at the time of his father’s death to manage her finances. With her son’s agreement, the care manager recommended a certified financial planner (CFP) who has worked with similar families to help Bob devise a plan. The goal is to ensure that additional revenue is generated to help pay for the needed care without having to touch the principle or equity in the home. The plan also included providing his mother, in the form of a loan, with a monthly stipend to ensure that she will have enough to pay for the appropriate level of care. His siblings understand that although Bob is willing to “lend” his mother a monthly stipend, once she dies, he will be repaid by her estate.

Bob and Jane understand the expenses involved in long-term care. While it is too late for their mother to take advantage of the value of a LTC insurance product, both Jane and Bob may benefit from learning about their options. The care manager provided them with referrals to qualified long-term care insurance agents.

Do You Have an Aging Life or GCM Ethical Dilemma of Serving Wealthy Entitled Clients?

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”