Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Can a Caregiver Assessment Avoid UnnecessaryPlacement ?

April 9, 2021

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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 to use this valuable GCM tool. By using a caregiver assessment the geriatric care manager may find that building respite for the caregiver, through other relative or paid caregivers, a caregiver support group, or coaching the caregiver to make changes that make her/ his tasks more bearable and doable and avoid inappropriate placement of the older person

Avoid Elder Physical Abuse Though 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 and avoid the risk of physical abuse and prevent involvement of APS making the caregiver and care receiver’s lives even more painful and chaotic and risking placement in a nursing home.

Mrs. Handy has Two Dads in Her Head

Let’s take the example of Mrs. Handy, a caregiver daughter caregiver She calls a GCM as she is about to place her Dad. 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. The care manager coached her to set a new boundary for him to go to bed 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. In addition, she sees her doctor for depression, joins an online caregiver support group, and asks siblings in other towns to take her Dad once a month for a week. Her Dad is not moved to skilled nursing. This is what a geriatric care manager can do for her to help avoid unnecessary placement.

Find out more on my playlist “Caregiver Assessment” on My Youtube channel Geriatric Care 

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Filed Under: Aging, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Alzheimers, care manager, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver coaching, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, coaching caregivers Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life geriatric care, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, barrier to caregiver assessment, care manager, caregiver assessment, caregiver burden, caregiver burn out, caregiver burnout, caregiver coaching, caregiver overwhelm, case manager, elderabuse, geraitric assessment, geriatric care manager, innappropriate placement, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, secondary stressors, unnecessary placement

Start-Up Geriatric Care Management Marketing and PR Checklist

April 7, 2021

 

To grow an ALCA or Geriatric Care management business, you must use-  marketing and public relations (PR). ( usually social workers and nurses have never done )Here is a helpful start –

 

 Start-Up Geriatric Care Management PR/ Marketing Checklist

1. Brand Identity- including logo design and collateral material design

Services needed to complete

Research competition, develop key differentiating features, develop a brand positioning statement, and develop business names, graphic design for the logo.

, colors for business communication. Consider consulting a branding firm.

2. Business Identity            –

Get coordinated business card envelopes, note cards, and folders                                  

Services needed to complete

Graphic design, printing, and delivery

3. Products sheets or Sell sheets, Brochures

Services needed to complete- Copywriting, graphic design, printing, and delivery

4. Identified and 3rd party targets – including a prospect profile

Services needed to complete-

Identify targets ( elder law attorneys, assisted living, concierge physicians, trust/wealth management departments) in your services area.  Research develops prospect profiles, mailing lists, key factors in specific communication messages per target audience. Add to marketing excel sheets.

Want to know more?

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: 3rd party targets, Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, ALCA Disaster Plan, brand, branding, branding ALCA business, Branding GCM Business, care management start-up, care manager, complementary consultatiom, coronavirus marketing, e-newsletter, GCM emergency procedures, GCM Sales, GCM Speaker's Bureau, GCM Start -Up, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Logo, marketing, Marketing aging life care, marketing ALCA /GCM, marketing care management, Marketing copy, marketing geriatric care management, Marketing plan, Marketing Sell sheets, Marketing Strategy, Marketing to top 10%, Marketing Tools 2021, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Public Relations, social media marketing, START UP, Start-up Marketing, Third Party Tagets Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, Benefits vs Features, Brand identiy, care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric care manager private duty home care, home care care manager, Home care marketing, marekting, marketing geriatric care management, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, PR for geriatric care management

Caregiver Assessment- What Does It Takes Professionally ?

March 30, 2021

Doing TWO Assessments

To meet the needs of the whole aging family, the care receiver, and the caregivers, GCMs need to begin assessing the caregiver as well as the care receiver. There is a synergy between the caregiver and client – they are interdependent. If the caregiver is stressed or weak the client does not receive good care. They both suffer without supports that a care manager can give them.

A caregiver assessment helps the GCM see this faltering interdependence by using a caregiver assessment. The National Center on Caregiving at the Family Caregiver Alliance calls this a process gathering information describing the caregiving situation and identifying the family caregivers’ particular problems, needs, resources, and strengths. This means that the care manager can see issues from a caregiver’s perspective and can focus on what supports they need to give them the best care. The GCM compares this to the client’s assessment of needs. The result of doing two assessments is discovering both the client/ care receiver needs and restore health and well-being, prevent poor care, client injury or illness, caregiver burnout, trauma or quiting, and unnecessary placement in a nursing home.

Create a Circle of Care

One resource that a GCM can bring to a caregiving family is what Gail Sheehy calls a circle of care. To create this supportive connection, the GCM needs to take her or his coaching skills and put together a support system around the formerly isolated, solitary family caregiver. The GCM can coach the family caregiver to ask for help so the GCM can assist in reorganizing the family so adult siblings can share in the care of the older client with the identified family caregiver. The GCM is what Sheehy calls a compassionate coach who can help the beleaguered caregiver attract and assemble a platform to keep on giving the care she or he wants to give the aging person.

Caregiver Resources

A circle of care includes emotional resources for the direct family caregiver. These emotional resources could and should include adult siblings. Reconnecting midlife brothers and sisters, through the circle of care, is an important GCM task, as siblings are the longest and deepest relationships in any person’s life. The GCM may have to depend on his or her clinical skills in helping siblings with forgiveness or reconnecting siblings who live long distances apart to add them to a circle of care. Midlife siblings have often spent the last 30 years tending to their own families, so the point of reconnection of midlife brothers and sisters often happens when they are in middle age in the midst of a crisis in parent care. This is where the GCM needs to employ clinical skills in midlife sibling work or to find the resources for the family to help with this healing sibling reconnection.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, care manager, caregiver, caregiver assessment, Caregiver Burn Out, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, CIRCLE OF CARE, estranged siblings, GCM COACHING SKILLS, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, midlife siblings, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings Tagged With: caregiver assessment, CAREGIVER RESOURCES, caregiver strain, caregiver stress, Circle of Care, family caregivers, geriatric care manager

Critical Success Factor for Start Up Care Management Aging- Serve Top10%

March 29, 2021

Who Are Your Aging Life Customers?

 

Your customers need to be in the top 10% economically and here’s why. That is how you will make money, stay solvent and thrive. To start a Geriatric Care Management business PLUS to write a major section of your  GCM business plan, you must describe the customers you intend to serve -your market assessment or opportunity. That tells you and investors whether you will have enough customers to make money. The Concierge Client who is in the top 10% financially is your client.  Start your business plan and your intention to make money, with a definition of your ideal client. Example: Woman, 85 years old with chronic care needs who has an income or liquid assets of $500,000 or more.

Upper 10% Customer Needs to be Your Mission and Intention- Why?

You want to list the customers who will reward you the most financially. This has to be in your mission and deeply in your mind. The “Why” is Medicare does not cover geriatric care management which is about expensive as a plumber or more critically – home care-at $4000-6000 a month -as expensive as the average closing cost on a home PER MONTH. Only the top 10% can afford that. So, make this your mental intention because you are running a business whose very blood is cash flow. Without the profit motive and profit, your new business stands a major chance of failure

Ideal Clients and Third-Parties You Need for Success

 How many of these ideal clients are in the area you wish to serve? You need to do an analysis of the age and income levels. Generally, geriatric care management customers are over age 85 or are disabled younger people with incomes in the range of the top 10% in your community. One gateway to your customers is the local overstressed adult children of clients, long-distance caregivers with family members who need help and live in your community, Another door is third parties, such as trust officers, attorneys, conservators, or guardians, who refer you to their elderly clients or adult children, as a trusted GCM’s, 

If You Want To Start an Aging Life or Geriatric Care Management Business you need to know you can make money before you start.

You need to do market research to define the size of the market in the area where your business will be located (e.g., how many people over age 85 live in Modesto, California, how many third-party target markets such as trust departments are in the town?). This type of demographic information may be available from U.S. Census Bureau reports local Area Agencies on Aging, local chambers of commerce, local hospitals, and even members of the local media who have done their own surveys. You can use the Internet to retrieve U.S. Census data in your area, and in addition, you can Google your State Department of Aging, find your local Department of Aging, and then find all senior services that may have data on older people in your area.

 

You Need To Understand Billing and Cash Flow for Success

You also need to know about billing. You might be making good money but if your cash flow is not coming in to pay your bills and staff, you stand a new chance of failure. Care managers who are most often social workers and nurses, often have an ethical dilemma with billing and are filled with guilt. That guilt keeps them from billing every hour and leaving time billed off their timesheet to help a client. This leaves them hurting their business and their bottom line over the short term – not being able to pay their bills and themselves each month. If this continues long term- the GCM is faced finally,like a slowly dying tree in a drought , death by bankruptcy.

Check out my  Online GCM Business Class which includes 10 modules on starting your GCM Business including two modules on financial management so you do not go under and lose your dream start-up

  • LEARN MORE ABOUT LEARNING GCM BUSINESS SKILLS WITHOUT GETTING AN MBA 

  • Check out our affordable price or choose a monthly payment plan

 

Find Out More 

 

Skills you will learn in My GCM Business Class

  • GCM ALCA billing skills to develop a billing system that allows you to bill 85% of your time, control your cash flow, invoice promptly to make a profit
  • GCM financial forecasting skills to develop a 3-year financial forecast Excel spreadsheet to track your basic profit and expenses and to track the number of clients and billable hours needed to break even make a profit, pay back loans, hire new staff, and take a salary yourself
  • GCM organizational design skills to create your business flow chart and job descriptions, and outline how power flows down your staff to deliver gold standard care to clients
  • GCM marketing survey skills to pinpoint your area’s upper 10% clients and 3rd-party referrals to market, to make your business profitable
  • GCM competitive analysis skills to set the fee per hour your market will bear for your services and to gather information from each, to position your services vs your competition’s so clients will choose you
  • GCM timeline skills to identify and list (in a manageable, doable order), major tasks to complete before you open your business
  • GCM business planning skills to write a 13-part business plan to create a blueprint of measurable goals for your business’s financial success
  • GCM marketing skills to create a marketing plan to develop lead sources, conduct leadgeneration, launch social media and conduct content marketing to gain new customers
  • GCM sales skills to position your agency to sell your menu of services
    through benefits to 3rd parties and clients through cold calling, 1-1 sales meetings, and inquiries, by knowing how to close the sale and sign the contract
    • LEARN MORE ABOUT LEARNING GCM BUSINESS SKILLS WITHOUT GETTING AN MBA 

    • Check out our affordable price or choose a monthly payment plan

    Find out More 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life business, ALCA business, ALCA Business Skills, care manager, cash flow, Concierge aging clients, concierge clients, GCM Business Flow Chart, GCM Business Skills, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, high end clients, value proposition Tagged With: aging business, aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging life geriatric care billing data base, barrier to billing, Billing 85%, billing for geriatric care management, business start up, care manager, case manager, critical success factor For GCM or Aging Life business, Ethical Dilemma with Billing, GCM billing, GCM customers, GCM making a profit, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Profitable aging life business, profitable ALCA business, reaching top 10% elder, target market for GCM customers, webinar billing care management hours

Video-What Business Skills Must You Have for an Aging Life or GCM Start-up?

March 25, 2021

 

If you a Nurse, Social Worker or Aging Care Professional or Business Entrepreneur and want to start a profitable Aging Life / Geriatric Care Management agency

What Business Skills Do You Need?

A new geriatric care management business must spring from the intersection of three streams: your passion, your competence, and market opportunity. To start a geriatric care management business, the adage to “know thyself” becomes critical. Are you passionate about geriatric care management? You will need passion to sustain you when the situation gets tough—which it does in all beginning businesses. You must have the core competence both to be a geriatric care manager (GCM) and to run a business. Good GCMs with no business acumen, which is often the case, frequently fail in business. You must also have the market opportunity.

Is This a Good Choice for You?

If very few older people live in your community, you may not be in the right area to start a geriatric care management business. If 10 other GCMs are practicing in your town, the

competition may limit your own market opportunity. Finally, you need to assess why you want to start this type of business in the first place. Are you motivated by the financial gains? by community recognition? by a need to make a difference? 

You Have To Know Cash Flow

You especially must understand billing and cash flow. Without this knowledge, you will fail like 50% of new businesses do. Along with this, you have to understand how to bill 85% of your care manager’s time to stop cash flow from putting you out of the business. This leads to overall financial forecasting skills. When do you break even, when can you hire a new care manager and afford to stop being a solo practitioner who wears so many hats you are crushed by the weight.

 

Learn Billing and Financial Forecasting and More my new on-line Start-Up GCM Business Class

Most care managers have no business background because they are nurses, social workers, and health professionals without an MBA. Yet their business depends on cash flow and financial skills to pay the bills

Check out my  Online GCM Business Class which includes 10 modules on starting your GCM Business including two modules on financial management so you do not go under and lose your dream start-up

Skills you will learn in My GCM Business Class

  • GCM ALCA billing skills to develop a billing system that allows you to bill 85% of your time, control your cash flow, invoice promptly to make a profit
  • GCM financial forecasting skills to develop a 3-year financial forecast Excel spreadsheet to track your basic profit and expenses and to track the number of clients and billable hours needed to break even make a profit, pay back loans, hire new staff, and take a salary yourself
  • GCM organizational design skills to create your business flow chart and job descriptions, and outline how power flows down your staff to deliver gold standard care to clients
  • GCM marketing survey skills to pinpoint your area’s upper 10% clients and 3rd-party referrals to market, to make your business profitable
  • GCM competitive analysis skills to set the fee per hour your market will bear for your services and to gather information from each, to position your services vs your competition’s so clients will choose you
  • GCM timeline skills to identify and list (in a manageable, doable order), major tasks to complete before you open your business
  • GCM business planning skills to write a 13-part business plan to create a blueprint of measurable goals for your business’s financial success
  • GCM marketing skills to create a marketing plan to develop lead sources, conduct leadgeneration, launch social media and conduct content marketing to gain new customers
  • GCM sales skills to position your agency to sell your menu of services
    through benefits to 3rd parties and clients through cold calling, 1-1 sales meetings, and inquiries, by knowing how to close the sale and sign the contract
  • LEARN MORE ABOUT LEARNING GCM BUSINESS SKILLS WITHOUT GETTING AN MBA 

  • Check out our affordable price or choose a monthly payment plan

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, ALCA Business Skills, ALCA Financial literacy, billing, billing 85% of GCM hours, care management start-up, care manager, case manager, elder care manager, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, marketing ALCA /GCM, Marketing Strategy, marketing to upper 10%, MONEY FOR GCM BUSINESS, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Sales in geriatric care management, START UP, Webinar Tagged With: affordable payment plan, aging business, aging life and geriatric care management, aging life care managers, Aging Life Or GCM Products, business start up, care management, critical success factor For GCM or Aging Life business, elder business opportunity, entrepreneur, GCM Business Class, GCM Subscription Plan, geriatric care management business, geriatric care manager, profitable ALCA business, Profitable GCM business, start -up elder business, start-up geriatric care management aging life care manager, starting a GCM business, Subscription Model

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