Poor Nursing home staffing Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Why Do Care Manager’s in Business need a Rolladex on Speed ?

August 24, 2022

If you are an aging life or geriatric care manager- you need three databases. The second is a contact database or Customer Relationship Management database CRM. Think of them as your old Rolodex on speed.

Any aging life or geriatric care management business has to start out with a foundation of great customer relationships. Get the CRM database before you open your doors and fill it up with referral sources to your customers- mainly- elder law attorneys, trust officers, concierge physicians and all target professionals who refer families to you who need GCM.

You, the aging life or geriatric care management seller, must connect with aging families who need your product .The best way is through your CRM database and these key referral contacts.

As your company expands these Aging Life or GCM business connections grow more sophisticated. You start to manage a myriad of connections, across time, within each referral contact you do business with. Instead of using excel spreadsheets with marketing targets, with a CRM, you can send a form elder law letter to all elder law contacts individually addressed. You can use the CRM to track all calls, newsletters sent emails, or marketing visits to a concierge physician to track the ” touches” you made in marketing to that third party. It will do mass mailings and even newsletters.

You can add all of your continuum of care or all contacts in the community that help you weave a care plan- physicians, elder mediators, CCRC and all housing, MFT who specialize in aging- all the contacts that you use as your individual prescription or care plan

Cathy Cress MSW

Dear Governor Newsome – Don’t Sentence Frail Elders To Ca. Nursing Homes Wrenching Them from Free Loving Family Caregivers!

June 18, 2020

Dear Governor Newsome :

I am on the board of the Health Project Center in Santa Cruz, County that operates the MULTI-PURPOSE SENIOR SERVICES PROGRAM (MSSP program ). and CAREGIVER RESOURCES PROGRAM (CRC) in both Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties.

KEEP THESE NURSING HOMES CERTIFIED SENIORS IN THE CHEAPER COMMUNITY

I am writing to support these programs and implore the governor not to cut their funding. These senior programs were created to keep people out of expensive nursing homes in the 1970s and keep them in the cheaper and nurturing community. By cutting MSSP and CRC the state will only accrue more debt by spending more money to fund now COVID -19 disease-ridden nursing homes. These nursing home certified beneficiaries who are the frailest and poorest of our elderly population. They are kept in the community by MSSP where they receive food services, socialization, and therapy. Their family caregivers receive respite.

Giving these caregivers respite can be the difference between caregiver burnout due to unpaid relentless 24-hour care of a loved one. Burnout ends in placement in nursing homes. But with COVID -19 still rampaging many cannot even get in.

CAREGIVER RESOURCE CENTER KEEPS FRAIL SENIORS IN FREE FAMILY CARE VS NURSING HOME PLACEMENT $80,000 a year

Respite to caregivers to stop inappropriate placement in nursing homes is one of the main functions of the Caregiver Resources Centers in California, which needs its funding kept intact by the governor. The Center provides support to families caring for loved ones with cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer’s Disease, making referrals to caregiver counseling, support groups, local caregiver service, and giving small respite grants. Without the caregiver falling apart, which the Caregiver Resource Center stops, once again, the older nursing home certified client will just end up being forced to trying to get into a nursing home at $80,000 a year, when the family caregiver was FREE.

IF these programs are demolished by the governor and MSSP and CRC are axed out in a blood-spattered cut and these frail seniors will be dumped into California nursing homes where the state will spend needless money it does not have.

STATE WILL PAY $80,000 A YEAR PER PERSON FOR NURSING HOME PLACEMENT VS. $5000 FOR MSSP

These programs save the state 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 MSSP and nothing for the family caregiver. .This makes the cuts both fiscally wrong and mystifying.

MSSP CUTS MAKE RECIPIENTS GO TO NURSING HOMES WITH 0 TESTING, JUNK PPE THAT LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE BAGS WITH HOLES

Seniors have borne the greatest share of death already from COVID-19, as over 50% of the dead in the US are now elders from coronavirus who lived in a nursing home rife with the virus. These MSSP participants, without the support of MSSP, will have to turn to nursing homes. According to the House Select Committee on Nursing Homes a few days ago, these facilities do not have enough testing and personal protective equipment to stop the virus from spreading. They do not even have PPE and at CMS direction, FEMA has been sending out junk for PPE that looks like garbage bags with holes. This is what you would be sentencing these frail elders to with the scrawl of the governor’s seal.

CRC CUTS SEND Frail ELDERS FROM FREE FAMILY CARE TO $80,000 YR NURSING HOMES

You are sending these seniors from the loving care of their family to nursing homes with few beds, COVID-19 raging from one bed to the next bed, beds not 6 feet apart, and no

testing or PPE. All this while the state pays $80,000 or $90,000 per person per year in a nursing home when the State pays only on average a little over $5,000 for the person to be in MSSP.

CUTS TRAVESTY IN JUDGEMENT AND MORAL FISCAL BANKRUPT CHOICE

I am a graduate of Berkeley with a master’s in SW in aging planning and community development and this is just planning for more state debt and more seniors dying in expensive, CMS FEMA and Federally caused, death traps called nursing homes.

Sincerely

Cathy Cress MSW

Cathy Cress
cressgcm@got.net
CressGCM Consult
https://cathycress.com/

Santa Cruz, Ca 95062

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.

Why is Rachel Maddow Telling Aging Professionals About Nursing Homes Death Instead of the Feds????

April 27, 2020

Nursing Homes Turning into Death Camps

I have been learning that nursing homes are turning into death camps from Rachel Maddow not the federal government or aging community. I watch her every night as she is someone who reports the news fairly, focuses on facts and science,not what politicians and the president says. She reports what politicians actually do to avoid what the Trump camp calls fake news. This enrages me as why aren’t I hearing this from the aging community?

I learned that 17 dead bodies piled up in an NJ Nursing Home a week ago . Three days ago it was reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation that Nationwide, among the states reporting data, states indicate that cases have occurred at more than 4,000 facilities, and nearly 51,000 cases and over 10,000 deaths have been reported by in-long-term-care-facilities/

No Fed Requirements To Report Covid-19 Deaths

According to the Kaiser Foundation until recently, there was no federal requirement for nursing homes to report coronavirus outbreaks and COVID-19 deaths. This lead to an information gap for families, residents, and policymakers. After gutting the Obama regulations to improve care in nursing homes in 2017, On April 19, 2020,( many days after Rachel Maddow and the NY Times were reporting the horror(,CMS released guidance that would require nursing homes to report cases of coronavirus directly to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).This move is totally hypocritical after Trump is the one who caused the horror by slashing regs that would have prevented deaths. This new data is not yet available, but there are a number of states that are already reporting data on long-term care facilities.

When I saw the carnage of nursing home deaths, yet SNF’s asking feds for immunity I was even further outraged.

We Need Inquiry Into Federal Response

I blogged about the root of this problem a week ago We need an inquiry but more than that we need a federal response, which there is none and national coverage which is just starting to occur after the most vulnerable on the planet were locked up in buildings where no one could visit, filled with the people with the highest risk, and staff going from facility to facility as they need three jobs to keep them afloat and spreading the virus then becoming ill themselves

TRUMP CUT BACKS IN NURSING HOME STAFFING INFECTION CONTROL

This lack of staffing and cut back in infection control federally mandated by the Trump government. Trump cut back regulation upgrades mandated by the Obama administration

The Obama administration effort, finalized in 2016, requiring all long-term care facilities to develop infection control and prevention plans to detect, report and contain communicable diseases.

It also covered telemedicine, so required publishing infection control rates weekly in Nursing homes that manage from 1.6 million to 3.8 million infections each year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. A 2017 analysis by Kaiser Health News found that 74 percent of nursing homes have been cited for lapses in infection control — the most frequent type of health violation.

So, aging professionals, I am going to give you Rachel Maddow’s sage advice,

Sound the alarm- Aging Professionals

Read your local paper for nursing home problems in your area. Now they are only being reported cumulatively by the New York Times and major papers. Send letters to the editor. Write to your governor. Alert your Area Agency on Aging.

Call Your Local Nursing Homes

Call the nursing homes locally and ask what you can do. Besides setting off the alarm can you organize PPE by getting a local club or group of women who sew to help, Even kids have contributed like this child in Boston who sews masks.

Scream to the top of your lungs.

A holocaust is happening and the Trump administration is ignoring the carnage – Rage against the coming of the night for the older people we all love and have devoted our lives to helping.

Concierge Clients Who Can Afford Private Geriatric Care Management No Longer Taking Cruises

April 7, 2020

Tens of thousands are dying in the US and worldwide of coronavirus so a cruise ship of any cruise now wreaks of expiring slowly on the ocean with no real hospital and no place to disembark. This is not the product that the upper 10% or anyone would board now. But in better times concierge products like a Viking Cruise as it is understandable to a high-end customer. They buy it –because it has exceptional services and recognizes their entitled station in life. Coronavirus recognizes no status class and kills all equally.

Sell Products Clients Need During the Pandemic

Geriatric care managers, rather than tell inquiry clients they do assessment–should offer products they need in this pandemic – like relocation (moving an older person). Elders who live in dangerous SNF facilities, so vulnerable to COVID-19

In an article from the LA Times Charlene Harrington a Professor from UCFS states”Families with loved ones in nursing homes should consider pulling them out if it’s at all feasible to care for them at home, said Charlene Harrington, professor emeritus at UC San Francisco’s School of Nursing.

“The risk of exposure is so overwhelming,” said Harrington, who has studied nursing homes since the 1980s. “It’s a terrible concern.”

ALCA suggested that you call all the SNF’s in your area and explain that you specialize in moving elders and can be of help to their clients who are moving out of SNF’s due to family concerns.

GCM Products for the Isolated and Lonely Seniors During Stay at Home Orders

Quality of Life (increasing the joy in an older person’s life who is lonely) can be an important service to offer during the coronavirus pandemic. Seniors who live alone are already isolated, lonely, and depressed and the virus only causes this to explode in their lives. Quality of Life programs like Sage Eldercare’s Humminbird Program has gone remote and can be purchased for a minimal amount for client’s by families or agencies, nationally. Nina Herndon GCM, Sage owner and innovator, started this program several years ago because she was tired of watching elders she served watching TV 40 hours a day. She has brought it into the digital world to serve coronavirus patients nationally. Nina also wrote the Chapter on how to set up a Quality of Life program in my book Handbook of Geriatric care Management 4th edition

Products For Seniors Discharged from Hospitals in Pandemic When SNF’s will NOt Take Them

Home from the Hospital is a GCM product the Safely helps the older client through discharge and the first 3 months to make sure they do not return to the hospital, which now is overrun with coronavirus patients and at capacity.

Home From the Hospital pinpoints exactly what the older person needs for discharge with the hospital and why the family is desperately calling for help. They are calling for help at a piercing decibel level because nursing homes will not take them for fear of COVID 19 infection of their residents

To do this, offer these products to families third parties, hospitals, and nursing homes in this crucial time. Develop continuously integrated solutions through a product procedure placed in your company operation manual, along with all of your products so you ensure your staff can deliver, step by a step-that high-end product that the Concierge client especially under the huge stress of the coronavirus with vulnerable parents -just purchased and demands.

If you do not have an operation manual, I have all these products in my GCM Operations Manual plus 11 more, with all the procedures in place so you can instantly offer them. I will offer a 20% discount for the GCM manual during the pandemic for Geriatric Care Management Agencies suffering during the coronavirus outbreak. Contact me here