How To Create a Team in the Long Distance Family During Covid 19?

May 16, 2020

OFFERING A COVID care plan product with Long Distance Care Providers

The first step for the Long-distance family members (LDF) worried about elder exposure and hospitalization of Covid-19 can be to take a team approach. This can be a call with a geriatric care manager for a consultation that will help long-distance families work as a team to keep elder family member safe while you are at a distance This Care management consultation can be done with a HIPAA-compliant video conferencing services

The first thing that the geriatric care manager works on is to find out if the older person has the required legal documents – Advanced directives, POA/HCPOA & GCM HIPAA release because of the risk of both hospitalization and death due to age-related COVID-19. If these documents are not present, the care manager will have a discussion with senior and the long-distance family regarding their wishes, explaining older adults over 65 are at higher risk for severe illness. The care manager will discuss who is to be the health care decision-maker with the older adult and suggest they consult a family attorney or elder law attorney to complete. If they choose not to use an elder law attorney, as time is of the essence in the pandemic, they can suggest access AARP advanced directives documents for any state which can be executed quickly.

If documents are completed, locate in the home and provide explanations to the family that they must give a copy to emergency contacts and physicians as required and place in planning binder. In the planning “Go binder” list all emergency contacts with phone numbers/e-mail addresses – family, friends, physicians, pharmacy, professionals providing in-home services. Also, list all medications and prescribing physicians in “Go Binder”. Upload documents into caregiving applications like caring village.com so the long-distance from always has the updated documents.

Join my new GCM on Line Classes Working on Covid- 19

This research was done by my geriatric care management student GCM Maryann Prudhomme. My students are working on Covid-19 products in both all of my two new online classes in blackboard right now. If you are interested in joining our class and

learning tools to be a geriatric care manager go to cathycress.com online classes

Join Me in My New Free Webinar

Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19 Products

Sales have severely declined in COVID_19. Learn how to increase your, clients, through all your products but especially new Covid-19 and telehealth. Sell Successfully

this and any GCM product in a 2-part intake. Closing the sale means the client signing your contract and giving you a deposit. Most care managers are untrained and terrified of this process. They are more terrified of going out of business with COVID 19

Learn the 5 steps to make and close a care management sale to get that contract signed, get a deposit, grow your business, bolster cash flow, make payroll, and stop you from being one of the 50% of new US businesses that fail after five years.

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

What are Covid-19 GCM Services you can offer

How to make the sale in the inquiry call -with a complimentary consultation

How to ” Identify needs using client” challenge questions” to find the problem you need to solve to make the sale

How to present your offer by selling solutions to the problem with a mini care plan

How to manage objections if the caller has concerns about price or product

How to close the sale with non-aggressive closing questions to have your contract signed, get a deposit, and grow your business with a new client

10 Parts of Care Manager’s Role With Family Death and Dying of COVID-19?

May 13, 2020

GCM Role is Working With Family In COVID-19

Care managers cannot be in the hospital with a patient dying of COVID-19. They can support their bereft children, who cannot see their parents during the hospitalization, in those last moments of goodbye’s or after the death in this deadly pandemic.

In normal times 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. But is COVID -19 they can offer guidance to the family through the sometimes weeks of hospitalization, intubation, their loved one is on a ventilator and ultimately often- death separated from loved ones.

Navigation Through a COVID-19 Death

The normal final passage through life can emotionally charged. If the family is following a long labyrinth to the end, in coronavirus, the blind alleys may be blocked by a rushed hospitalization, banned from seeing their loved one in the hospital and not understanding the disease that is killing their loved one. Care managers can find an opening through this maze. Family dynamics and fear of dying can all explode a fraught crisis of care in dying of coronavirus. When vital end of life decisions need to be made, the stress of the responsibility and the seriousness of the situation can break in a mammoth wave of distress fear and anxiety over the “ whole family system”. The geriatric care manager specializes in this whole family system even at the end of life.

Facilitate Family talks over hospitalized COVID-19 Elder

Care Managers can facilitate terrified discussions, and clear the way for family members to come together to work as a functional unit around an unknown killer disease that preys on their loved one. Understanding the differing viewpoints is critical. Knowing what a parent wants and does not want during the last days and hours of life help define and simplify the role of the family. It helps the family bear the burden of having the responsibility of making decisions that their parent wants. Turning this around can also help families have some solace that they carried out their parent’s wishes after their parent’s death.

Care managers can help family members handle the stress of an elder’s hospitalization and death by:

Encouraging routines, exercise and social connectedness with friends and family
Advocate for them with the hospital staff to get updates in this chaotic time in hospitals,
Help them maintain contact with hospital personal to get updated medical status
Create opportunities to communicate safely with the hospitalized family member via text, telephone, email, or video chat
Support and mediate if necessary proactive discussions and advanced directive preparation in a rush if not done
Build a circle of care can help to reduce some of the potential conflicts,
Support them in having essential conversations, prior needing intubation, on last wishes if health status deteriorates
Provide opportunities to say goodbye
guide them in setting up rituals that can celebrate the end of life and give solace to a family during a time when there are yet no rituals for a COVID-19 death.
Work with the hospital to set up Zoom with the family to say goodbye to a loved one.
Geriatric care managers do much more with clients and families but especially now with Covid-19 elder’s and their families facing a separated, fractious end of life
See more about Cathy and her book Care Manager’s Working With The Aging Family

Advanced Directives AND COVID-19- Do You Know When To Initiate in the Pandemic

May 5, 2020

Covid-19 Makes Signing Advanced Directives Critical

Advanced directives are even more critical with COVID-19 patients, who are often elders. The New York Times had a story about an older woman who was suffering from Covid-19 When she entered the hospital no one asked about advanced directives. After several weeks on a ventilator, the hospital asked about advanced directives, she had none. All her elderly sisters could recall was what she had said about dying when she was young.

WHEN DO YOU DISCUSS ADVANCE DIRECTIVES?

Advanced Directives should be part of your initial psychosocial assessment. Once the COVID-19 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

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 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:

• A durable power for an attorney for healthcare

• A living will

• A do not resuscitate order DNR (efforts to restart the heart after it has stopped

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. But if hospitalization is imminent, getting the patient to consider signing with legal consultation maybe your own option, with the family’s permission.

· ·

Join Me in My Latest Webinar About Products For GCM Clients Especially Covid 19

How to Sell VIP Clients a Menu of Products They Want To Buy During COVID-19 & After

When May 7^th

Time 2:PM PST -3:30 PM PST

Learn in this webinar:

Why Sell VIP Products rather than Geriatric Care Management
Why VIP GCM Clients prefer GCM Products
How to Develop a 4 Season Menu of Products

VIP Products to Add to your Menu of Services

VIP services to Add to your Products

Covid -19 Products to offer now

Covid-19 Assurances & Technology You Must add to Your Products Now and in the future

Sign Up

How To Create a Team in the Long Distance Family During Covid 19?

OFFERING A COVID care plan product with Long Distance Care Providers

Other problems that geriatric care managers who offer consultation can solve for long-distance family members

Join my new GCM on Line Classes Working on Covid- 19

Join Me in My New Free Webinar

Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19 Products

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

What are Covid-19 GCM Services you can offer

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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

OFFERING A COVID care plan product with Long Distance Care Providers

Other problems that geriatric care managers who offer consultation can solve for long-distance family members

Join my new GCM on Line Classes Working on Covid- 19

Join Me in My New Free Webinar

Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19 Products

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

What are Covid-19 GCM Services you can offer

GCM Role is Working With Family In COVID-19

Navigation Through a COVID-19 Death

Facilitate Family talks over hospitalized COVID-19 Elder

Care managers can help family members handle the stress of an elder’s hospitalization and death by:

See more about Cathy and her book Care Manager’s Working With The Aging Family

Covid-19 Makes Signing Advanced Directives Critical

WHEN DO YOU DISCUSS ADVANCE DIRECTIVES?

Advance Directives

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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