Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

What are the 5 Steps to a Successful Covid-19 Concierge Client Inquiry ?

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How Not to Lose a New Client at an Inquiry

An inquiry is the most critical point in opening or losing a case. A successful inquiry means taking successful steps to increase your aging life or geriatric care management business. 

The Desperate Calls You will Get

With many states lifting COVID-19 restrictions, in spite of COVID-19 still present, people will travel again. You will get desperate calls from adult children visiting older family members and seeing first-hand, how unprepared their vulnerable aging parents are if COVID-19 explodes in the fall or sooner. They probably will be reluctant to move their older parent to Assisted Living after the high incidence of coronavirus in these facilities no matter how many amenities they provide. Here are steps to success for an inquiry or any call about your services

Take These Steps to Convert Inquiry to New Client

1. You must assure the caller that your geriatric care management services can be counted on to thoroughly assess the elderly person’s and family caregiver’s situation at the intake, to provide a safe coronavirus plan for sheltering in place, if the pandemic, still here, roars back again, determine the level of care if that is needed and level of GCM monitoring to sell your services.
2. You sell these services by convincing the caller that you offer a highly personalized and compassionate approach to the family and older clients. This breaks down to gaining client and family trust that your GCM services are the very best path leading them the care they desperately need, led by a professional guide they can count on.


3. You persuade them that they will get unbeatable customer appreciation, you will exceed their customer expectations, ensure the quality of life for the older client, and offer a concierge driven service.
4. You explain how your hands on professional staff can make families relieved and happy because they understand they save precious time and overwhelming stress by using professional GCM’s.
5. You show them you can access all community services and resource options they could not find alone and are now available to them through your services.


6. In this one sometimes short call, you show potential new clients how your concierge care management service will solve their problems through -you the GCM being there for them every step of the way.
7. You persuade them that by scheduling the next step, a free 30-minute complimentary consultation call, you will help them make sound decisions based on reality and assessment. 

The GCM sells all of this through this free 30 -minute complimentary consultation done by a compassionate and highly skilled professional the director of your agency.

 

Learn the 5 Clinical Steps  to Signing Up These families

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

 

Sales have severely declined during  COVID_19. Now that many states are lifting restrictions, 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 or one of

the 7.5 million businesses that will fail in the next 3 months from COVID-19 

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

SIGN UP FOR FREE

 

 

 

 

 

California Cuts Pushing Frail Elders into the Cesspools of COViD-19

Here in California, the frailest, poorest and oldest in the state are being potentially knifed in the back by slashing budget cuts to the very services that keep them out of nursing homes.

 The Multipurpose Senior Services Program , one of the first geriatric care management programs in the nation, designed to keep fail elders out of nursing homes, is set to axed from the California State budget.

The Governor has also proposed elimination of $2.9 million of state funding and $3.9 million in federal matching funds for the 11 statewide Caregiver Resource Centers, 

providing critical respite care and counseling to caregivers of adults with chronic and disabling health conditions.images_20130906-154817_1.jpg

Both programs were designed 4 decades ago to keep elders at home and out of more expensive nursing homes and staunch family caregiver burnout. They offer huge safety nets, designed to keep frail seniors in the community.

MSSP is of a daycare program providing rich social and health services to frail elders and their families. The Care Resources Program caregiver respite and support to overwhelmed family caregivers.

These programs save the state a bundle of money. Each of the MSSP clients is disabled enough to be eligible for nursing homes and poor enough to be eligible for MediCal. So instead of the state paying $80,000 or $90,000 per person per year in a nursing home, the State pays only on average a little over $5,000 for the person to be in GunnDadJacket.jpgMSSP.This makes the cuts both fiscally stupid and mystifying.

What California government is doing is ripping giant holes in this web plummeting 45,000 seniors into the cesspool of COVID-19 skilled nursing facilities, where almost  half of California COVID-19 deaths occured.

 Without the services and supports available through MSSP, and the Caregiver Resource Center, many older Californians will have no other choice but to be admitted to nursing homes, where nearly half of all deaths related to COVID-19 have occurred. 

But the doors may be barred. Given the high risk of COVID-19 in nursing homes, owners are reluctant to take new patients. So, the elimination of the Caregiver Resources Center and  MSSP is really a death sentence to frail elders. It leaves no fire extinguisher for caregiver burnout of the family caregivers who care for elders with the toughest disease: brain impairment- Alzheimer’s, stroke, dementia, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s other conditions that may cause memory loss or confusion.

This may cause a cascade effect- placement of these horribly demented elders, into the plague-infested nursing home or also to death’s doorKali--Bill-Connies-book-.JPG

Governor Newsome has been a national hero as the first governor to issue a stay at home order to close counties down in California. He slowed the spread of coronavirus and kept California in a safe zone compared to most other states. But this was at the cost of taxpayer dollars as 4.7 Californians were put out of work. 

 He finds himself in a double bind now with a chasm of a budget hole, that he is trying up to fill with cuts like the ones proposed to the senior program. But the cuts will lead seniors to nursing homes  costing $80,000 a year instead of the $5000 for MSSP  into those caldrons of coronavirus

California is always the canary in the coal mine- the innovator that most states follow. So, these cuts can be expected across the nationwide. Who is the real villain in these cuts, the Trump Presidency. 875 billion was approved in the House of representatives in the HEROES Act. Cutting both programs saves $119 million. But these cuts would be eliminated if Congress OKs this aid for state and local governments — a prospect many state lawmakers believe is unlikely as President Trump is threatening to veto the money to the states . This has spurred a cacophony of outrage from local legislators and senior advocates. angered state lawmakers from both 

major political parties who say it’s irresponsible in light of the coronavirus pandemic that has spread through nursing homes across the state. It’s one of many conflicts emerging this week as lawmakers hold public hearings examining Newsom’s proposal before they must vote on a spending plan by June 15.

Want to help save these programs

 

PUBLIC COMMENTS – WRITTEN: Submit written public comments by email to: sbud.committee@sen.ca.gov

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

 

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.

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

  • Create a Household plan of action for prevention and possible infection with COVID 19.
  • Identification of technology tools to keep client and LDF in contact
  • Evaluate the presence of required cleaning/safety products as recommended by CDC
  • Evaluate the area of home appropriate for quarantine in the event of suspected COVID infection of client or caregiver
  • GCM can also focus on the quality of life of seniors and provide a comprehensive plan to ensure the individual is living a quality of life while providing consistent communication with the Long Distance family-like Hummingbirdproject.net Thanksgiving-Travel-2_20151119-171457_1.jpg
  • Development of client-specific communication tool for possible hospitalization to individualize client needs, status and care planning post hospitalization

 

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

SIGN UP FOR FREE 

 

 

 

 

 

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