Covid-19 and GCM SERVICES Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Are You Ready for Thanksgiving Calls From Stressed Long Distance Caregivers ?

October 27, 2022

Long Distance Caregivers Stressed by Distance

Stressed long-distance caregivers are getting ready for holiday travel. So care managers -get ready for the holiday rush -when these long-distance caregivers call you. Many have often been flying or driving to both visit and care for aging family members for a while and have been exhausted for a long time. These usually understand that their parents are deteriorating with age and are savvy enough to have researched options and already found you on the web ( a reason to have a great website).

The Holiday Push Over The Edge

When Long distance family gathers with aging parents on Thanksgiving and everyone sees problems with an older person- the long-distance family may agree to call for help. The brutal stress of the holiday season on top of caring for an aging parent long-distance may push the long-distance care providers over the edge to join the Holiday Rush for care and call you. Are you ready for that holiday rush??

Signs That a Parent Needs Care

Unpaid bills litter Dad’s desk. He refuses to go to church when he was a devoted churchgoer all his life.

He’s drinking too much at the local pub. When the daughter puts the post-turkey leftovers in the refrigerator she finds moldy food on every shelf. When asked about the bills and the moldy food, Dad gets really angry at them when he was an easygoing guy all his life. This is the holiday push where they pick up the phone and scream 911 to a care manager.

Call made to 911- to the GCM from stressed long-distance providers

At that point, the daughter may feel panicked by holiday push and pull out her phone and call an aging life or geriatric care manager because she cannot fly home without getting help. Are you ready for these desperate calls you will be in this holiday rush?

You -Care Manager Gets Call From Stressed long distance care providers- Are You Ready?

Give frantic adult children hope when they frantically call this holiday.

So be prepared for their inquiry and know the needs of long-distance caregivers plus the resources in your area you can use in this holiday rush with long-distance caregivers when they call you. Do not give away the store in your call but let

them know that you are an expert in the needs of long-distance care providers and an ace navigator in your area that can find services and choices that are perfect to end their holiday pu

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Learn how to create!

Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
Pre-Holiday Marketing to help you sign up families who might face a serious decline in aging parents
Get ready for the holiday rush

How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
How to use tools to contain holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
How to move the family to New Year’s stability

Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great pre-holiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care
Featuring

Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management

Find Out More
Featuring Speaker

Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel Geriatric Care 1

US COVID Double Jeporady- Race& Aging

February 1, 2022

To Celebrate Black History Month let’s explore the recent revelation from COVID of the Double Jeopardy of COVID Race and Aging

There is a US double Jeporady- Race and Aging showing up in our 3-year-old pandemic. Black people and older adults are the two groups most affected by COVID-19. History is not just about the good things that transpired but the negative events that occur like COVID and what it has revealed about the health of both Elders &Black Americans.

This double jeopardy, as a race- and age-informed analysis, demonstrates how Black race and old age are associated with practices and policies that shape key life circumstances (e.g., racial residential segregation, family and household composition) and resources in ways that embody elevated risk for COVID-19.
In a cross-sectional study of adults tested for COVID -19 in a large midwestern academic health system, COVID-19 positivity was associated with the Black race. Among patients with COVID-19, both race and poverty were associated with a higher risk of hospitalization, but only poverty was associated with a higher risk of intensive care unit admission.

Racial Capitalism

Racial capitalism is a fundamental cause of the racial and socioeconomic inequities within the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in the United States.
The Double Jeopardy -Race, and aging show up in the overrepresentation of Black death reported in Detroit, Michigan is a case study for this argument. Racism and capitalism mutually create harmful social conditions that fundamentally shape COVID-19 disease inequities. These disease inequities (a) shape multiple diseases that interact with COVID-19 to influence poor health outcomes; (b) affect disease outcomes through increasing multiple risk factors for poor, people of color, including racial residential segregation, homelessness, and medical bias; (c) shape access to flexible resources, such as medical knowledge and freedom, which can be used to minimize both risks and the consequences of disease; and (d) replicate historical patterns of inequities within pandemics, despite newer intervening mechanisms thought to ameliorate health consequences. I would also add that the majority of paid caregivers are people of color and contract it because they work with COVID patients- . Interventions should address social inequality to achieve health equity across pandemics.

How Do We Change the Roots of This Double Jeopardy of Race & Aging?

So we hope that these health revelations will spur our government to address the roots of this double jeopardy-Race and Aging, something we have failed to address, these historical patterns of inequity for poor people of color and all people of color not just over pandemics but our entire caste system when elders and people of color are at the bottom, as Martin Luther King said, along with the untouchables

4 Steps to Create a Webinar to Market your Aging Business During COVID

January 10, 2022

Coronavirus pandemic information. Microscopic view of a infectious virus mutation. 3D rendering

What Do you do to set up a COVID webinar that gets lots of sign-ups and sales?

Set up a webinar on your agency’s Omicron Safety. When You set up a webinar on COVID you create excellent Public Relations that reach a really large audience that promotes your agency during the pandemic and the current Omicron surge. When you set up a webinar on COVID you position your agency against your competition when by featuring a webinar on omicron. You are using a major marketing tool to show your agencies follow CDC and state safety precautions. This is crucial to adult children seeking your services as COVID still rages through Omicron and Delta.

First Step to set up a webinar for overwhelming Sign -Ups

The first step to set up a webinar on omicron is to subscribe to a HIPPA compliant webinar platform. Besides ZOOM there are others that are less expensive or have way more customer support. All are less expensive than ZOOM and Hippa Compliant.

Nothing ELSE Matters Unless You Have The Right List of Recipients!

The second step when you set up a webinar on COVID is to create an email marketing database ( or use your own) to invite your target audience to the webinars. Nothing else matters unless you have the right list of recipients. You can use this for your e-newsletter. This is cheaper than mailing costs and also the most direct way to reach people both clients and target markets during the pandemic.

Create a Brilliant Title for Your Webinar

The third step when you create a webinar on Omicron for your care management agency is to pick a title for a webinar. Effective titles that bring sign-ups like this are one of 4 steps to market your aging business.

Create a Fantastic Description that Gets Tons of Sign-ups When You Set a Webinar on COVID

The fourth step is to schedule a webinar on COVID, on the webinar platform you chose. Add your great title, DESCRIPTION, PANELIST, BRANDING INFO, COPY INVITATION URL, SET UP EMAILS (confirmation, reminder (3), and follow up).

When you set up a webinar on COVID your panelists should include the Director of your local Health Department as each state sets its own rules for COVID ( Omicron) safety carried out by each county health department. So that person can speak to the level of COVID in your county, what the county safety precautions are, where people can get PCR testing locally, the availability of home testing kits, the importance of getting vaccinated and boosted, and where residents can get these shots. You can also have a local physician or virologist if you are in a large city that may have them.

You can have a nurse or social work from your agency go over your own agencies safety protocols, which you should have on your website

Covid newsletter

Subscribe To MY GCM YOu Tube Channel and view my two webinars on COVID.

Omicron Gone Nuclear-Are you Marketing Your Agencies COVID-19 Safety ?

January 3, 2022

How Do You Market the Safety Of Your Agency with Omicron Cases Exploding Nationally?

What is the best way to show the Covid -19 safety protocols of your GCM or homecare agency with new Omicron surge exploding COVID cases once again? You must overcome adult children’s hesitation to use homecare and GCM services. Why hesitation? Although about 62% of all Americans are now vaccinated -while— more than 87 percent of adults 65 and older — have been fully vaccinated, yet terrifying the public and adult children who care for aging loved one’s needing care at home —as COVID exploding again with the highly contagious omicron variant accounting for an estimated 58.6% of sequenced U.S. virus cases in the week ending Dec. 25, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Nowcast model showed, was up from an estimated 22.5% a week earlier ., 22% self identify as anti-vaxers, So aging families remain very nervous about your agency coming into a senior home.

During this new COVID-19 Omicron surge what families look for in your agency is your Covid 19 safety of staff- the care providers, care managers, and office staff’s vaccination rate, your safety protocols, PPE equipment use, and evidence that you work with your local department of health, state and CDC to stay compliant.

DO YOU CREATE A COVID -19 SAFETY MARKETING PLAN?

Hygienic shield offering COVID-19 Saftey from omicron

A key element that goes into that marketing plan would be an e-newsletter, with a marketing campaign on your covid-19 safety sent out in formats like Constant Contact Survey Monkey other choices

This will boost the clients you can serve, as the Omicron surge has made adult children and elderly clients are nervous to have visitors come to their homes, exposing elders

States and individual health systems have historically addressed vaccination requirements for diseases such as influenza and hepatitis B. You must follow your state’s COVID regulations. Today, more than 2,500 hospitals, or 40 percent of all U.S. hospitals, have announced COVID vaccination requirements for their workforce. They span all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Potential clients need to know your care staff and care managers you use are incentivized to get vaccinated.

newsletter to market COVID -19 safety

Other Ideas to Add to your e-newsletter about COVID

Warning about Omincron surge

Include Videos in your e-newsletter like this terrific e-newsletter that Lifespan, a care management agency in Santa Cruz, Ca. uses introducing their staff products and services during COVID.

Tell a story with the COVID safety you want to show future clients and their adult children
Use your i phone to record your video
marketing Covid -19 safety of your agency
If you are a care manager, include a list of great reasons that a client or customer should work with an ALCA or Geriatric Care Manager during the Coronavirus pandemic. ALCA members get this in a flyer “Why Work With An ALCA Member During A Crisis “.The Aging Life Care Association has huge resources for dealing with coronavirus impact on geriatric care management. This makes joining ALCA now a great idea in this lethal pandemic and its deadly effect.
- - 5 steps to create an e-newsletter with the right copy, to get out the word about you
  - Sign Up for my Latest Free Webinar
    
    11 Clinical Steps to Work with Dysfunctional Families-Post Holidays –
  - CressGCMWebinar -Thursday, January 6 2022 2:00-3:30 Pacific Time
  - Sign Up For Free
  - Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday
    
    and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who face a need for care during the omicron surge.
    
    Learn how to:
    
    Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
  - Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family
    
    Master the 5 Clinical Tools – you need – to solve these problems with your clients
    
    Learn Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
    
    Sign -Up Now
  - Even if you cannot attend, you will get a recording the next day by signing up

Why are Care Providers for Clients So Hard to Find ?

September 8, 2021

Home care aides all over the US are AWOL. Care Management, home care agencies, nursing homes are severely understaffed and cannot find enough caregivers to staff cases for shifts. Why?

Disorganization of Home Care Industry

Staffing shortages have frustrated the home care and care management industry for

decades, according to Paula Hahn author of the New old Aging blog for the New York Times. . There is no national recruiting or training program for this huge industry.The home care industry has always been a hodgepodge of for-profit companies and chains, nonprofit programs and publicly funded care through Medicaid, all operating under a confusing welter of state and federal regulations, plus an uncharted “gray market” of clients who avoid agencies and hire privately. But Covid-19 has intensified the problem.

“I’ve never heard such frustration over finding workers, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” said Vicki Hoak, executive director of the Home Care Association of America, whose 4,000-member agencies collectively employ about 500,000 people.

Bureau of Labor Predicted this in 2020 -Pre-COVID

This was foreseen and was by the Bureau of Labor statistics. They predicted in 2020 that the long-term care sector would need to fill an additional 6.2 million direct care job openings between 2019 and 2029 as workers leave the field for a new occupation or leave the labor force altogether due to retirement, disability, or some other reasons. Combining these departures and new jobs, they projected a 7.4 million total direct care job openings in the decade ahead

Mammoth Growth in # of Seniors Who Want to Age

in Place

The bigger problem is the growing need for home care. Each day 10,000 seniors turn 65

in the US and the number of older adults will more than double over the next several decades to top 88 million people and represent over 20 percent of the population by 2050. . The majority want to age in their home and need home care, where today there are not enough home care workers to fill those jobs.

More $ Spent on Home Care than Nursing Homes

2015, was the first time nationally that more money was spent on home care than nursing home care. We’ve seen a culture and financing shift toward home and community-based care.”
Covid -19 now the Delta variant has wreaked more chaos into the home care market. Home care workers are mainly women and had to stay home with their children when school closed down. They were also hot hard by COVID themselves, working with seniors before a vaccine was developed.

Solutions to the National loss of caregivers

There are many other factors the loss of care providers and great solutions offered by Leading Age a national non profit for aging and home care.

Sign Up for my Latest Free Webinar

11 Clinical Steps to Work with Dysfunctional Families-Post Holidays –

Sign Up For Free

Sign -Up Now

Even if you cannot attend, you will get a recording the next day by signing up

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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