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

Are You an Entrepreneur or Non-Profit Wanting to Start a Geriatric Care Management Business?

June 15, 2021

Do you have a big enough Slice of the VIP Pie…?

If you are you are considering starting a for profit geriatric care management or ALCA business you must do a market study to find if you have enough VIP clients. Will you have a big enough slice of the VIP pie to make that profit? That pie slice needs to have a big enough mixture of VIP older clients in the upper 10% who can afford GCM or ALCA services and more important 4-6K a month for homecare.

Is This New GCM Service Feasible?

To start this feasibility study you need to determine the geographic footprint of the VIP market you wish to serve.
You should look at your entire potential service. For example, if you plan to serve the whole state of New Jersey or the entire city of Princeton or the zip code 33023 in Hollywood, look at that Geographic area through the census.

You are searching for the section in your service area most likely to yield VIP older clients in the upper 10% who can afford GCM or ALCA services and more important 4-6K a month for homecare .

Market Sizing Can Help Find VIP Clients

Doing a Market study will find out the number of older adults & population density within service area, the number of VIP households with income $500,000 as indicator of ability to pay and the number of residents over 75 as indicator of medically complex cases where 3 or more ADL’s cannot be done helps you understand if enough VIP clients are in the area you choose for you to start a GCM or ALCA business

This VIP zip code search, in a market survey will insure that your Geriatric Care Management or ALCA agency does not go bust and actually lose money. It has happened. Avoid this mistake.

Whether you are an entrepreneur wanting to start a Private Geriatric care management business or a non-profit agency wanding to add a for profit care management arm to raise money for the non profit you must do this market study as your first step down the path of investing in the oping of a GCM or ALCA business.

Join me in my newest FREE Webinar :

Sales – PR & Marketing to Find the VIP Client

When: Thursday, July 15th

Time: 2:00 PM-3:30 PM PST

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

REGISTER NOW

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

Can You Give a Good Death without” Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light”?

March 9, 2021

Dylan’s Thomas warns us in his poem

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Give a good death – not a cold terrifying dying of the light.

But today a care manager or geriatric social worker can help an older client go gentle into that good night, they do not have to burn and rage at the close of their day because you will be giving them as Atul Gawande suggests – a good death – not a cold terrifying dying of the light.

The terminal phase of any life-threatening illness is the time between diagnosis and the final decline when no cure or extension of life is in the offing. The individual confronts progressive decline and deterioration. Death is imminent. The care manager has a role.

The focus of doctors and patients now changes from attempting to cure the illness or prolong life to trying to provide relief from pain and to comfort the sufferer. Religious concerns such as what happens after someone passes away or how to handle the suffering at the end of life or how to give comfort to family members are the focus during this time as well as trying to tie up any loose ends.

Death to Rage About- Alone in the Hospital

But in the time of the plague, when 95.5 % of souls still die in the hospital and not at

home the care manager has a critical role with the family. High tech introduced by the care manager and at times the hospital with the care manager coordinating the family outsides and unable to touch their dying loved one – can make this death full of rage more gentle as the person passes into the night.

Care Manager tasks:

Make a referral to hospice if the family has not already reached out

Partner with hospice and work under them

Monitor anticipatory grief needs

Communicate that this is the end (and time to say goodbye)

Assess spiritual needs and contact the appropriate religious-spiritual counselors to provide comfort and healing.

Encourage family members to say The Four Things That Matter Most “Please forgive me”, “I forgive you”, “Thank you”, and “I love you”.

Assess the need for paid caregivers to help the family or help family members share round the clock care among family and friends

Support the family members in their need to grieve and have respite by continuing to assess for overload and burn out with a caregiver assessment tool

Prepare family for the active phase of dying which can be loud and disturbing to someone who is not aware of what will occur

Bring in technology if death is alone in the hospital

Join me Thursday, March 11, and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers

Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn how to

1.Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death

2. Help clients be active participants in their care

3.Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care

4 Provide family center care to caregiver and family

5 Choose the right support services through all stages of death

6.Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team

7 Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID

8.Use COVID -19 Family Coaching for GCM

SIGN UP

If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

Gwendolyn LAZO Harris MA, CT, Seniors at Home, San Francisco and Diane LeVan MA both highly expert care managers, created a seminal chapter “Palliative Care and End of Life Care Manager ” in my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family

Aging Life or Care Management Intakes- Do You Know How to Make the Sale?

May 15, 2020

Do you know how to increase your slower inquiry calls during COVID-19?

It all starts

with having Covid-19 products, alongside your existing products and services. But the sale is made at the inquiry when the client calls you.

Especially during the pandemic do you know how to sell over the phone when you cannot yet go to all people’s homes? Even so, do you make this fatal and costly mistake with a client inquiry? When you get a request for information, over the phone, do you drive to the client’s home to do the intake- without first getting a deposit and contract first? How does this break your bank balance?

Aging Life care manager Sally Sanitze received an inquiry call and drove an hour to see the client. After spending two hours explaining her services, doing a geriatric assessment then asking for a deposit and signed contract the older gentleman said he could not afford her services and would not sign the contract at that time. The Aging Life care manager came up empty-handed.

How do you avoid traveling for two hours, spending 3 or more hours with a client, and not getting the case or making the sale?

You do the inquiry over the phone with a complimentary consultation, and then make the sale and ask for the contract and the deposit. You do not drive to the client’s home without first getting a signed contract deposit – first.

Here’s how You Do Two Call Intake

You do a two-call intake. The first inquiry call to your agency taken by a highly experienced staff in your office. That person must clearly understand the client problem, prompting the call to your agency and crucially finding out how it impacts both the client and the care providers.

They then offer an appointment to do a complimentary consultation for 30 minutes scheduled within 24 hours, made for the agency director.

What To Do in the Complementary Consultation

Do briefly outline how you are an expert at solving the problems (moving,keeping at home, COVID-19 safety in an elder’s home or home from the hospital with Covid-19)
Do a mini care plan showing exactly how you would solve the client ‘sand care providers problem outlined in the first inquiry call
Do make the sale by asking the client if they are ready to move forward with a contract and deposit
If they say yes send out a contract through Adobe and get a deposit through Pay Pal.

Join Me in My New Free Webinar

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

Sales have severely declined in COVID_19. Learn how to increase your, clients,

through all your products but especially the 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.

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

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
SIGN UP FOR FREE

Medicare For All Includes Long Term Care – Perhaps Pay Attention Now With -Covid 19 Raging ?

March 25, 2020

Long Term Care Not Covered by Medicare

Geriatric Care management and home care, among other critical services tin aging are not covered Long term care services, is not covered by Medicare. In Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren’s Plan, Medicare for all would cover long term care, a point that the Washington Post said that Sanders did not emphasize enough.

Medicare For ALL Would Cover Long Term Care

Time Magazine, recently reported that Covid-19 ‘s effect right now is making Medicare for all seem like the present need nor an unaffordable dream . The “Department of Housing and Urban Development halted foreclosures and evictions during the emergency; the Department of Education slashed federal student loan interest rates to zero and will allow borrowers to completely suspend payments if needed; Congress is negotiating a plan to send direct cash payments to families, and a version of paid sick leave just became law.”

What If We Had Medicare For All During Covid 19 Pandemic?

If we had Medicare for all during the Covid 19 pandemic, we would be better able to disburse funds in emergency situations and to purchase necessary machinery, such as ventilators ( that only the president seems to be able to dispense through the Defence Production Act & does not, during a crisis and get them where they need, like the 30,000 needed and missing in New York) face masks that as so needed that the CVC recommended bandanas and a 10-year-old student in Boston is sewing herself the height of the pandemic right now.

Unlike our current health care system, Medicare for All would include specific funding for dealing with pandemics or other health emergencies that could be distributed quickly without requiring additional legislation of presidential planning, which seems not to have happened at all. The United States cannot be left unprepared for mass health risks like COVID-19. It is time to put in place Medicare for All and better protect the health of the American public.

Ethical Dilemma

This lack of Medicare covering Long term care leaves geriatric care managers in an ethical dilemma of being able to only be able to serve the upper 10% and leaving 90% of seniors and thus under 64 with chronic care needs like MS, unserved.

Elizabeth Warren’s plan for Medicare for all could cost 20 Trillion over 10 years. Existing Medicare over the 10-year period would cost 16 trillion. The bill we are just passing in Congress to fund is 2 Trillion. We will need another bill. Are all the mounting deaths from Covid 19, 55,000 people with Covid 19 and counting, disruption to business, our lives and the hospital really worth not paying attention to Medicare for All- which it looks like we just might be able to afford?

Find out about this ethical dilemma and what care managers must do to serve the upper 10%, and ignore lower 90%, who have no long-term care under Medicare .

Since geriatric care management must be privately paid for, in the absence of coverage under present Medicare, in spite of our moral dilemma

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

Medicare For All Includes Long Term Care – Perhaps Pay Attention Now With -Covid 19 Raging ?

Long Term Care Not Covered by Medicare

Medicare For ALL Would Cover Long Term Care

What If We Had Medicare For All During Covid 19 Pandemic?

Ethical Dilemma

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

Ethical Dilemma in serving only Top 10%

Who They Are- 4 Types

How to Locate them in your service area

How to create a strategic marketing plan to sell to them

How to Develop Gold Standard GCM Products and Services

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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