How Do You Detect COVID–19 Symptoms in Seniors While Living Long Distance?

July 1, 2020

COVID–19 Detecting Symptoms in your loved one from a Distance

We can not always be with our loved ones. Long-Distance Families make approximately 43.5 million caregivers who have provided unpaid care to an adult or child in the last 12 months. How can you keep a watchful eye on long-distance older family members for symptoms of COVID-19? First, you will need to know what symptoms to watch and listen to.

Did you know that COVID -19 is known to develop into a severe acute respiratory syndrome and may result in death? The elderly are more susceptible to this contagion simply due to their age. Your job is to become their health detective by paying acute attention to physical symptoms and asking questions when conversing with your loved one.

Symptoms to Listen & Signs to Look for

Signs and symptoms of COVID-19 may appear 2-14 days after exposure, commonly referred to as the incubation period. Common signs and symptoms can include:

Fever, cough or tiredness – If your loved one is suddenly not making sense or acting confused when you are talking with them, this could be an indication of having a fever and an infection. Listen for coughing during your conversation and don’t be afraid to ask if they are napping more often or sleeping longer than usual or if they are weaker than usual.

Other symptoms can/may include:

Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing Muscle Aches
Chills Sore Throat
Loss of taste or smell Headache
Chest pain

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO BE KNOWLEDGEABLE OF MEDICAL HISTORY

If your loved one has existing medical conditions such as heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, severe obesity, chronic kidney or liver disease, or compromised immune systems they may be at greater risk for contracting COVID-19.

CALL YOUR LOVED ONE’S PCP OR ARRANGE FOR THEM TO BE TAKEN TO THE HOSPITAL IMMEDIATELY IF MORE THAN ONE OF THESE SYMPTOMS APPEAR.

As your loved one’s health detective – Vigilantly Monitor their Physical Appearance

Call often. Listen for symptoms such as coughing, shortness of breath, inability to complete sentences without having to take a breath. Are they suddenly confused or confused more than usual?

Use your technology. Face time with your loved one. Look at them. Are they having a hard time breathing? Watch and count how many times their chest raises per minute. Normal breathes per minute in the elderly is 10-30. With COVID-19 the rate will be lower. Look for the appearance of lost sudden weight loss. The virus can decrease their appetite as it affects their sense of smell, making food less appetizing. Look at your loved one’s lips. Are they discolored or have a light blue tint? This is a sign of oxygen deprivation and could potentially be very serious.

If you see any of these signs call your loved one’s PCP immediately and take/arrange for them to be taken to the hospital immediately.

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

June 20, 2020

How Not to Lose a New Client at an Inquiry

Closing the sale means the client signing your contract and giving you a deposit. An inquiry is the most critical point in closing the sale or opening 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

Sign UP For MY Free Webinar

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

Nursing Home Still Deaths Camps, 40,000 Dead – Feds Skew the Stats

June 14, 2020

Rachel Maddow once again, now the House of Representatives swept a spotlight on the despicable nursing home mortality rate of COVID -19. Nursing Home residents remain the largest % of deaths in the US. Although only 0.6 of the population they represent a whopping 42 % of the deaths

Feds Statistics Insanely Wrong

Highlighting the Do Nothing attitude that continues in the Trump federal government, CMS just released data collected from nursing home national wide that is cast as insanely wrong. Nursing home officials said their data were somehow scrambled, either because nursing home personnel reported in the wrong columns, or the numbers were loaded incorrectly somewhere between the CDC and CMS.

Yesterday the House Select Committee Briefing Confirms Urgent Need for Federal Action to Protect Nursing Homes from Coronavirus

Chaired by Rep. James E. Clyburn, they explored the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on nursing home residents and workers, including the deaths of more than 40,000 Americans in nursing homes across the country.

Chairman Clyburn called on the Trump Administration to take action to protect nursing homes, stating: “[W]e need the federal government to ensure our nursing homes have enough testing and personal protective equipment to stop the virus from spreading. That means providing coordination and resources—not just leaving it up to the states.”

Dr. David Grabowski of Harvard Medical School explained, “Rather than pushing the logistics and costs of testing and PPE to states and nursing homes, the federal government needs to own this issue. The federal government should set a consistent policy across all U.S. nursing homes and then provide states and nursing homes with the resources to achieve it.” He concluded, “The buck has to stop there.”

The Trump administration failed to provide nursing homes with testing and protective equipment.

We have focused on a lack of PPE in hospitals but what about nursing homes. Asked if the federal government has done enough to stem the outbreak in nursing homes, Dr. Grabowski replied: “Absolutely not, the guidance was not sufficient. I’ve actually called it ‘non-guidance guidance’ in that there were no teeth or dollars behind it. And if you don’t put logistics, if you don’t put costs into this guidance, if it’s just simply a theoretical set of guidance for the nursing homes and for the states; it’s not actually going to happen.” He concluded, “I would have liked to have seen federal leadership.”

Dr. Grabowski stated that nursing homes in many states still “can’t get testing fast enough” and “are really struggling to find the tests.” He explained, “The federal government should’ve put the testing in place and actually paid for it.” He stated, “Until we get rapid and accurate testing for all staff and residents, we won’t be able to contain COVID.”

Mr. Carlson explained that nursing homes face serious shortages of PPE and that “shipments from FEMA have been a bit late and inadequate.” He also explained that “the lack of federal coordination” has “impeded facilities’ ability to identify infected persons and to provide care.”

PPE Feds Send Looks like Blue Plastic Trash bags

NPR reported the PPE is either never delivered, flimsy, and much less than ordered or looks like remade trash bags. Instead of proper medical gowns, many packages hold large blue plastic ponchos.

In late April I blogged about the national COVID epidemic in nursing homes. It has been a month and a half and death toll, which was 10,000 rocketed up to, 40000, now – that’s 30,000 more deaths in just a month and a half.

Workers in the facilities still have inadequate PPE to protect themselves from the virus, and CMS in some fabulist attempt to look like it actually cares about Medicare and Medicaid, comes up with an outcome study that seems to be run by drunks or charlatans.

Now Rachel Maddow is showing us nothing has changed except the bodies are piled higher and higher in nursing homes. I care and I assume every senior agency that gets this does but put that caring into action. Write your Congressman, or maybe just adopt a nursing home and raise money in the community to buy PPE for them. This is, of course, pathetic but the government does not care, CMS does not care and President Trump certainly does not care about older people.

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

May 26, 2020

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

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.

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

Sign UP For MY Free Webinar

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

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

Nursing Homes residents in Pandemic -Need Help Today, Mother’s Day& Future

May 10, 2020

MOTHER’S DAY 6 FEET APART AND LONLEY

Nursing home residents, like prisoners, are locked in space “less” than 6 feet apart in facilities with a growing death rate that has reached 20% of all Covid-19. Support them on Mother’s Day and every day in the future. Their situation is increasingly dire as in Florida, a state with the largest elderly population the cases have spiked radically since restrictions were lifted 60% of new cases are in nursing homes

If you are an aging professional- step up to the plate. Through the Hartford Foundation join Huddles.The network is designed to support nursing home leadership, staff, residents, and families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. For the week of May 11-15, the huddles will focus on testing. They have organized the Engage Initiative for COVID-19 in Nursing Home. So join and advocate for facilities with the highest death rate in the country- where the federal government does nothing as a holocaust is occurring

MAKE A SIGN AND VISIT A LOCAL NURSING HOME TODAY

Support older residents in nursing homes by making a SIGN and standing outside the facility. Gather some friends. People all over the country are doing this, showing the residents they are loved. In Holiday Florida, nursing home residents were treated to a mother’s day parade. In Chillicothe, Ohio. residents drove around the driveways of a nursing home in HONK for HUGS

Today or someday this week, just call a nursing home in your city and tell them what you are doing. Get their permission and ask if you can go from window to window with your sign of Happy Mother’s Day or ” whatever you wish for them “and wave. It is that simple. Today these elderly, sick and threatened mothers, cannot see anyone, often have family long distance who cannot see them, and are literally locked in a facility where beds are not 6 feet apart.

PLAY IT FORWARD – DO SOMETHING FOR NURSING HOME RESIDENTS IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS

No matter what your state, town, or the facility is doing to protect them they are the number one target of coronaviruses doing to protects them. AARP has started a mutual Aide group to both give and receive emotional aide during a pandemic. Join a group or organize a group to make phone calls to residents of the local nursing homes. If you are a retired medical professional down to an aide or someone who can answer the phone- instead of virtually, you could really step up to the plate, and volunteer to help a nursing home that is understaffed in the pandemic .

In my home state, CALIFORNIA, you can join the Social Bridging Program. You can also join the Friendship line to call older people who are lonely and just need you to be there to listen.

ONE SMALL STEP FOR PEOPLE IN THE BULLSSEYE OF DEATH

The point is to do something one small thing whether it is on Mother’s Day Monday or this week. Take a step to help the bullseyes targets of COVID-19 the elderly who are terrified, lonely, and now on Mother’s Day alone.

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