Nursing home abuse Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

What Type of Conceirge Care Providers Do You Recruit for Concierge Clients?

May 2, 2022

Medicare Does Not Fund Long Term Care

Concierge Clients, wanting concierge care providers, are sadly the only clients of GCM or ALCA experts because of income inequity in the US and the fact that Medicare does not cover long-term care, like home care and geriatric care management.

You Are Only As Strong As Your Weakest Link Especially With Concierge Clients!

You must serve the top 10% of aging Americans because those clients make your ALCA business or GCM business make money and thrive. But to deliver the gold standard services that concierge care demands, let’s take the weakest link in your business- your care staff. You are only as strong as your weakest link these concierge care providers. These incredibly important employees’ skills will measure how concierge clients really rate you.

First and foremost to serve Concierge clients you need highly skilled concierge care providers with a CNA background or years of experience. Older generations, especially entitled clients, are likely to be

less trustful of an individual with numerous visible tattoos and a Mohawk. They would rather have their concierge care providers be a clean-cut employee wearing a uniform. You want background-checked employees with tolerant of demanding clients and willing to be servile and assertive and know when to use either.

Concierge Care Providers for Concierge Clients Should Be:

WELL-GROOMED
WELL DRESSED
SERVILE
GOOD COOK
GOOD TABLE SETTERS
WILLING TO BE CONFIDANTE but under GCM supervision

For COMPANION CARE hire

Sophisticated employee
Can Order Opera theater tickets
Accompany to events
Drivers Licence

GCM has to Set Boundaries with concierge clients:

Concierge care providers can cook French Cuisine but if the client“Heavy Care-priority -must have transfer skills and CNA or HHA skills not cooking skills
Cannot often get a gourmet cook who changes diapers
Cannot have careprovider looks like a model who uses Hoyer lift

CONCIERGE Clients-NON-medical

CAREGIVER’S SAMPLE to-do list

Doing grocery shopping or grocery home delivery
Post office run
Pet-care
Waiting in line at the DMV
Taking the car for Car repairs, oil change, car wash
Event planning- GCM
Gift-buying
Plant care
Picking up dry cleaning
Running miscellaneous errands
Making travel arrangements
Mail pickup
chef services
Dinner reservations
What Cannot do
Performing bank transactions, such as depositing or withdrawing money, or shopping for the client without pre-arranged payment through the store could pose a liability
Assist with finances, online banking, bill paying/tracking
pickup of prescription medications -Only GCM to do because of medication abuse and liability
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Free Webinar To Find Concierge Clients
How to Find Concierge Clients Who Can Afford You
WHEN Tuesday, May 17^th, 2022

WHAT TIME_2 PM-3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

What we will cover
- Why only the top 10% can afford private pay care management.
- Who are the surprising Retired VIP Clients?
- Who Are the 5 types of VIP/Concierge Clients?
- Sales Using Benefits Not Features to ALCA -GCM 3^rd PARTIES
- Understand how to find VIP Concierge Clients Do hot mapping & Market Studies
- How to Use Free Public Relations ( PR) to Find Adult Children of VIP Clients
- How to create or revise a Concierge Geriatric Care Management Strategic Marketing Plan
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Young woman hugging her mother or grandmother and looking at camera.

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.

Afraid of Your Competition ??-You Can Learn How to Position Your Business From Them

January 14, 2019

Your competitors can show you how to position your business so you stand out from the competition. Positioning is how you make clients in your area choose you over others in the area you serve. Your ALCA or Care management competition survey, ( which should so yearly by getting a mystery shopper). The Trump administration says there are lots of people out there be a mystery shopper since he shut the government down. These mystery shopper calls ( the coast guard or your staff) let you identify and survey other direct GCM competitors like the area agency on aging which may have a GCM arm or for-profits like accountants or elder law attorneys who include geriatric care management in their service mix.

Identify substitute providers like hospitals, often through their home health services. These can also be part of your competition to take market share from you. Private duty home care agencies offer geriatric care management to their web site. But you have to discover whether they have a certified aging life geriatric care manager as part of their staff. Tracking this down takes having a secret shopper calling all of these agencies and talking to the actual geriatric care manager and asking for their credentials, prices, services, and many more variables.

Professional Patient advocates in your area should also be tracked as possible competitors.

Non-profits often spin off for profit geriatric care management arms to help with the more needy clients they serve. Many religious denominations have geriatric care as a choice so you can learn how they are leveraging their brand. Area Agencies on Aging offer private geriatric care management and can do a good job of leveraging their respect and brand in the community.

Trust departments or wealth management services can have care management to assist with their elderly clients or the adult children in wealth management, who care for their parents.

All these competition surveys will show you marketing/positioning alternatives in your this competitive landscape. They will show how to better brand and shape your branding message- so you are the top choice of customers.

Find out how you can position your own GCM/ALCA agency, over your competition and be chosen by clients seeking care for loved ones.

Join me in my new FREE Webinar
Learn to Market Like Your Business Depended on it!
When: January 23, 2019
2PM-3PM PST
Learn

How to position your agency so it stands out from your competitors
How to develop or rewrite a strategic marketing plan in 2019 that brings more customers
How to use branding to build positive gut feelings about your agency
How to develop lead generation and tactics through third parties
How to set up leads generation with both a speakers bureau to do co-presentations & join the rubber chicken circuit to reach adult children and targeted audiences:
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Feds Discover” Nursing Homes” Gaming the System with Inadequate” Nurses” Aides-NY Times Sunday

July 10, 2018

The New York Times reports that nursing homes have been been gaming the Medicare system, disguising that they are terribly understaffed, with not enough nurses and nurses’ aides, to call themselves “ Nursing Homes “ leaving resident alone without care on a regular basis .

The front-page story published this past Sunday, reported skilled nursing homes on weekends are not “skilled” and barely have enough staff to tend to the patients. One man who cares for his wife is quoted in the story that on weekends, the facility it is almost like a ghost town.

What the article refers to is staff ratios This is the number of staff per patient needed to care for patients who need a high level of care from the nurses and aides, to change diapers, feed them, dress them all the activities of living these patients cannot do themselves.

What the article alleges Medicare just discovered that the nursing homes have been lying for years on about staff ratios. Kaiser Heath News just reported that data from nursing homes coming from payroll tells the real truth about inadequate staffing to care for these very disabled patients

97 years old woman suffers move into retirement home while sitting on her chair in hallway; furniture stands around her

The payroll data that proves these severe staffing shortages leading to dangerous patient care comes come from daily payroll records Medicare only recently began gathering and publishing from more than 14,000 nursing homes, as required by the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Medicare previously had been rating each facility’s staffing levels based on the homes’ own unverified reports.

The government has been a party to this by coming up with their star rating, giving five stars like a Michelin rating ,to what they considered great nursing homes. But these stars were not verified by inspections on a regular basis or payroll records, and staffing was self-reported.

.So, by checking payroll records of staff the real truth came out- nursing homes are dangerous places to leave loved ones who need high levels of care. This is not like having a poor meal at a five-star restaurant. This is like putting your mother in a place that the government says has great care and having her die of neglect.

Last Minute Valentines Gifts for Grandma

May 4, 2013

Valentine’s Day is coming up tomorrow. This is a ritual holiday that aging families can really celebrate. Here are

baby-boomer mature daughter gives her senior mother-in-law a red, heart-shaped box of chocolates for a Valentine’s Day gift

some gift ideas you do can make or do at the last minute to Mom feel extra special on a day about love. These ceremonial holidays and gifts mean so much more when parents are older.

Bringing the grandchildren into the celebration is a lovely gift in itself.
Handmade cards from grandkids are a top drawer present. Just bring them over with flowers or candy. If Mom lived long distance you can have the young artists email copies their colorful greetings or think of giving Mom My Celery as a gift for future holidays and sending mom greeting. This is an easy 2-way computer free e-mail where the grandchildren can email grandma a greeting for Valentine day- or any day they want. It just comes out of a fax in Grandma’s home and works with any fax she may already have. You and the kids can then send her pictures, reminder, and notes throughout the year. You might pay extra shipping or have a friend, neighbor or relative pick up and deliver for you

Another wonderful product is Presto, a printing mailbox that prints e-mails and attachments. You can scan your 4-year-olds terrific cards (kids art is the greatest) and e-mail Grandma as an attachment. With Presto, the card comes out of her fax you either buy as a gift for mother’s day or skip the fax if she has one already. You could have a friend, other relative or Mom’s neighbor pick it up where she lives and deliver it as a surprise

You could all make a big sign to have that same friend or neighbor – or relative tack somewhere in Mom’s home saying “Happy Valentines Day.” A homemade gift is really a bonus for grandma or Mom. Handcrafted gifts are penny wise but mean more than storebought because they came from you or the kids. Grandmothers radiate in handcrafted gifts

If your kids or you are arty make a mobile for Mom /grandmom. Attach cutouts of items she loves most -like her cat, photos of the grandkids or her favorite food. (mine would be chocolate covered cherries. Then you can use Skype or your i phone to show it to her then mail it

When they were little, my daughter made simple prints of my grandchildren’s hands and framed them with an inexpensive frame- a great gift for me. You probably can hold off on these thoughts until mothers day

If you have a Geriatric Care Manager, you can have her take care of all this for you as she or he is in the same town. They have a big heart as well.

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