What Are Your Choices in Aging Life or GCM Client Software?

August 4, 2021

Are you a geriatric care manager still using paper?

All Geriatric care manager or ALCA members should have the best GCM Software

choices. But Some care managers still function on paper instead of using GCM database .That is a bad business decision. You need to give clients gold standard service to retain them and arming your care managers with the most user-friendly fully loaded client database makes their concierge care so much easier to deliver. This gives your business a more profitable a bottom line in running a business. So spending money on a client database makes your more money.

What are the Four Geriatric Care Management Databases?

There are only four significant aging life or GCM Software Choices ? So the options for client software are slim. Jewel Code and My Junna are two choices. Care Tree I Health Home are two more options. Geriatric care managers and ALCA managers who

have home care staffing themselves are fans of Clear Care, which offers staffing if you also have private duty home care but is not really as user-friendly for care management needs with limited space to document & no care planning at all.

Which GCM Database Should you Choose – See my Newest Webinar?

If you are a geriatric or aging life care manager or a private duty home care agency doing geriatric care management start up or still on paper- which GCM software choice should you use and why. Find what you need in your client database and check out each product to see if it has what you want. Join me for my newest free webinar on August 25, when I will show zoom interview with all 4 four CEO’s asking them what are the features and benefits of their software and why their product stands out from their competition.

Here is a list of what a care management database should do for you- see what the CEO’s of the 4 GCM Software Products say they do

Track all client information
Create and update a care plan
Create a client activity log
Tracks billable hours
Document client activities
Interface with a calendar for client and care manager appointments
Track client referrals
Track guardianship information
Track medications
Reconcile medications
Create a client face sheet with all demographics.
Create a care community
Upload document and pictures
Do real-time updates
Be HIPPA compliant
Store historical client records
Create reports and export data
Create medication and text message reminders
Add custom patient field
digitalize patient paper records
go paperless
interface with care providers in the home via phone
Increase billing by making it easy to bill in the field
Patient portal
Have a calendar

Learn more about Aging Life and Care Management Software Choices

Join me in my newest FREE Webinar

Smart TECH Solutions to Wire Your Care Management Business for Profit

WHEN Wednesday, August 25^th, 2021

WHAT TIME_2 PM-3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

SIGN UP

Presented by Cathy Cress MSW – Handbook of Geriatric Care Management

We will Cover

Critical software programs that make care management information flow

with 1-1 interviews with CEO’s of 4 major care management software platforms
Caretree
IHealth Home
My Junna
Jewel Code

What you need in a website

Why you need content marketing

With interview with Natasha Beauchamp owner of Elder Pages on-Line where she develops both websites and content marketing for ALCA members and geriatric care managers

What are easy-to-use social media sites

Sign -up

How to Make a Profit Starting an Aging Life /Geriatric Care Management Business?

July 9, 2021

Do You Want to Make Money As a Private Care Manager ?

If you want to start a Geriatric care management or ALCA business you have to learn how you will make money. How??? It must be VIP clients.You may start it to reach seniors in need. However if it is a business and you are an entrepreneur , you need to understand” profit” and how to handle money and “like it”. Many GCM’s do not understand this. They end up going out of business

Do You Know the Customers You Want to Serve?

To make money you must choose to go after the right customers. To start a Geriatric Care Management business PLUS to write a major section of your GCM business plan,

you must describe ” that customer” you intend to serve -your market assessment or opportunity. It tells you and investors whether you will have enough customers to make money.

The customer you want is a VIP or Concierge client in the upper 10% financially. Why – Medicare does not pay for Geriatric Care management or ALCA services or Home Care it’s natural companion as people age. Only the top 10% can afford to pay you privately at 4-6 K a month for home care

Do a GUT CHECK

To make money you must choose to go after the right customers. To start a Geriatric Care Management business PLUS to write a major section of your GCM business plan,

you must describe ” that customer” you intend to serve -your market assessment or opportunity. It tells you and investors whether you will have enough customers to make money.

Start 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. In other words, you must serve the top 10% to make money and thrive. Are you comfortable with this as entitled demographic as social worker or RN? Do a gut check now

You want to list the customers who will reward you the most financially.

How many of these ideal clients are in the area you wish to serve to make a profit? You

need 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. Your customers are also the local overstressed adult children of clients, long-distance caregivers with family members who need help and live in your community, and third parties like Trust Officers who may hire you as a GCM such as trust officers, attorneys, conservators, or guardians.

Know how you can make money by doing market research hot mapping & the census

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 or Department of Finance and then find all senior services that may have data on older people in your area.

What is hot mapping?

You can also do hot-mapping .A zip code heat map outlines the boundaries of each zip code in your data set and helps you see the insights buried deep inside your numbers like where people with the highest income live in an area

Join me in my newest FREE Webinar

Sales- PR & Marketing to Find the VIP Client

WHEN Thursday,July 15th

WHAT TIME_2 PM-3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

SIGN UP

YOU Will Learn

Who Are the 4 types of VIP Clients.

Understand how to find VIP Concierge Clients- hot mapping & Market Studies

Learn to create or revise a Concierge Geriatric Care Management Strategic Marketing Plan

How to Sell Benefits Not Features to 5 Professional ALCA -GCM 3rd parties

How to Use Free PR to Use to Find Adult Children of VIP Clients

SIGN UP HERE

REGISTER NOW

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Find out More About What You Need to Know about money as a GCM start up.

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

The 2 Deadliest US Sites of COVID-19 Nursing Homes & Prisons

May 2, 2020

PRISON INMATES AND NURSING HOME PATIENTS NOT 6FT APART – 6 FEET UNDER

70% of inmates in federal prisons have COVID-19. In Kansas, the Lansing Correctional Facility had a riot of inmates over COVID-19 lack of care or protection It took the rebellion to get the coronavirus testing PPE and care. The Bureau of Prisons in Kansas confirmed finally that 79 staff have coronavirus and 88 prisons and prisoners dead.

Older residents in nursing homes cannot rebel like prisoners. Many can’t even walk. The Atlantic Magazine just published an article, We are Killing Elders Now. The writer states “In at least six states, these fatalities account for half of all COVID-19 deaths, and according to the World Health Organization, half of all coronavirus fatalities in Europe have been traced to nursing homes too. Some of this mortality is linked to long-term-care facilities that are shoddily run or that violate health standards. But most of them are doing the best they can with what they have. And they don’t have much”.

KAISER FOUNDATION NURSING HOME STAFFING AND USE OF PPE NOT REQUIRED IN MOST STATES

Kaiser reports -Staff Screening. It is more common for states to recommend rather than require daily screening of staff for illness in NFs (24 states recommend, 16 states + DC require)

Use of PPE. More states recommend (23 states) than require (7 states + DC) staff to use PPE

Two States that require testing for coronavirus of ALL residents of nursing homes are Maryland where 556 have died as of the Washington Post article. and Tennessee

THE FEDS HAVE NO CMS FEDERAL GUIDELINES OR REPORTING

We have no federal guidelines for safety testing according to an article by the Kaiser Foundation

It is now estimated that 16,000 deaths have occurred in nursing homes and that is without the federal government revealing any numbers and not making available any testing. But the numbers are probably huge- if we could just do testing.

CMS announced it would have a meeting of a “panel” of experts “ sometime at the end of May”. After probably 20,000 older people died and the feds did nothing this shows their sense of urgency about this pandemic’s national “elder cleansing”.

WHAT CONNECTS PRISONS AND NURSING HOMES – CONCENTRATION CAMPS

So, what is the connection between the viral spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes and prisons- 6 feet ? Prisoners and residents, in nursing homes, and prisons cannot social distance. Jails and prisons have human beings crammed together with no choice. Nursing homes have 2 beds or if you are on Medicaid three to a room. Neither group has a choice to social distance. They are ” concentrated” as in concentration camps or death camps.

Do SOMETHING – HELP NURSING HOMES PREVENT MORE CARNAGE

So, as someone who has spent her career in aging, I am calling out to everyone, especially professional in aging – do something. Since the feds appear to be doing little- call your congressman, write a letter to the editor.

BE KIND LIKE RACHEL MADDOW REPORTS LA JEWISH HOME LA WAS

Rachel Maddow suggests calling your local nursing homes and see what they need. Be kind like the LA Jewish Home was to a smaller nursing home LA Brier Oaks. They wanted to test their residents and had no tests and the larger LA Jewish Home had tests and shared them with the smaller as a good neighbor. What they found was ravaging but it also showed caring and generosity. Care and be generous and show the helpless elders in nursing homes in your town you are opposed to -nursing home being prisons or concentration camps.

How Do Concierge Aging Clients Transform a Geriatric Care Manager’s Bottom Line?

March 25, 2020

Concierge Clients Will Make You a Profit

Adding concierge customer’s services to your geriatric care management agency transforms your agency into a profitable service.

Why- a geriatric

care manager is a powerful health care concierge, just like the new concierge medical services. This is a steller selling point to potential GCM clients who are in the top 10% income brackets.

Upper 10% Can Afford You Because Medicare Sadly Does Not Cover Long Term Care

These well- to -do clients can afford to pay privately for long-term care geriatric care management and private duty home care because long term care is not covered by Medicare. Why is offering concierge services a great idea for this group of seniors? A geriatric care manager is a highly skilled professional who acts as a personal assistant to the aging family delivering the long term care services they need at the right time, the right place for the right level of care

What Great Benefits You Bring To The Concierge Client

You offer highly personalized aging parent care. Concierge clients can reach you at almost any time You build a deep relationship with the client and family. As a GPS through elder care, the GCM helps them step by step through one of the hardest journeys of their life. A geriatric care manager’s highly personalized service meets all the needs of the aging family and the client. GCM’s are like a concierge at a 5-star hotel there to serve the family by solving their caregiving problems and making elder care more seamless. But here is a deal-breaker, most care managers did not know they must have. You need a marketing and sales background to do an intake and get the client in your services.

Learn 5 critical success steps to start and run a profitable, GCM business

Free Webinar-Sales and Marketing to Find the VIP Concierge Client

March 31, 2020 -2PM -3:30 PM PST

Concierge Clients are the only way a GCM or ALCA care manager can make a profit and have their business thrive. Find out who are they, how you find them, design GCM Products they will purchase, and create a marketing plan and gold standard services to have them sign your contract and use your services long term

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