Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

  • Home
  • Products
    • GCM Manual New 5th Edition
    • Books
    • Geriatric Care Management – 4th Edition
    • Mom Loves You Best
    • Care Managers
  • Online Classes
    • Recommendations
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Past Webinars
  • Speaking
  • About
    • Recommendations
    • Interviews
  • Blog
    • Aging
    • Geriatric Care Manager
    • Siblings
    • Webinar
  • Contact

GCM Agency Lifespan Wins Top Awards

April 11, 2021

Geriatric Care Management Home Care Agency Wins National Award

Lifespan a 35-year-old geriatric care agency in Santa Cruz, California won prestigious awards from both national and local groups this month. Home Care Pulse awarded the care management home care agency ” Provider of Choice Award” for being best in class for rendering quality care to their clients, being trustworthy, and providing outstanding home care services the award was based on customer and staff surveys. Locally they also won the Santa Cruz Good Times Award for “Best of Homecare “award while competing with all home care agencies in their county.

Lifespan helped build trust during the “annus horibillus ” year of COVID  through their own website.Clients could see their extreme COVID safety precautions prominently provided on the navigation bar of their website. 

Outstanding Home Care in the year of COVID

The award recognized their outstanding home care services providing quality care through impeccably trained COVID safety-equipped and monitored home care staffing during the pandemic, building community trust. Clients in Santa Cruz, California needing care management services during COVID and ongoing were provided geriatric care management services developed over the agencies 35-year history and fine-tuned for clients’ needs during the epidemic

Quality of Life as Well as Quality of Care

The agency continued to offer Well Being – a service for lonely and isolated seniors who dramatically suffered during the pandemic from sheltering in place. Lifespan not only served the quality of care needs of clients but also the Quality of Life Needs  answering isolation and loneliness in a pandemic

Videos Showing Home Care Safety Build Trust

Finally, they showed the community their excellence and safety through videos in their email newsletters for 6 months, done with a phone by a talented staff member. The agency provides Quality of Life activities and adds videos about  Lifespan‘s Well Being Program. They upload them to their YouTube channel another great way they build trust with their agency. Market safety from Covid-19.

During the continuing but diminishing pandemic, as clients begin to use services like care managers and home care again, it is critical that you build that trust by showing customers you are safe. In Lifespan’s case, you can also win awards for this.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, Covid Safety Video, COVID-19 Safety, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, home care, Home Care Award, Home Care Covid Safety, Home Care Pulse, Home Care Trust, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, PPE, PPE Nursing Homes, Private Duty Home Care, Provider of Choice Award, Quality of Life, Videos Tagged With: aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care management, aging life care manager, aging parent care, care manager, case manager, Community Award, COVID Safety Precautionss, geriatric care manager, geriatric care manager private duty home care, Home Care Pulse, Home Care Pulse Awards, Home Care Trust, Lifespan, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Outstanding Home Care, private duty home care

Critical Success Factor for Start Up Care Management Aging- Serve Top10%

March 29, 2021

Who Are Your Aging Life Customers?

 

Your customers need to be in the top 10% economically and here’s why. That is how you will make money, stay solvent and thrive. To start a Geriatric Care Management business PLUS to write a major section of your  GCM business plan, you must describe the customers you intend to serve -your market assessment or opportunity. That tells you and investors whether you will have enough customers to make money. The Concierge Client who is in the top 10% financially is your client.  Start your business plan and your intention to make money, with a definition of your ideal client. Example: Woman, 85 years old with chronic care needs who has an income or liquid assets of $500,000 or more.

Upper 10% Customer Needs to be Your Mission and Intention- Why?

You want to list the customers who will reward you the most financially. This has to be in your mission and deeply in your mind. The “Why” is Medicare does not cover geriatric care management which is about expensive as a plumber or more critically – home care-at $4000-6000 a month -as expensive as the average closing cost on a home PER MONTH. Only the top 10% can afford that. So, make this your mental intention because you are running a business whose very blood is cash flow. Without the profit motive and profit, your new business stands a major chance of failure

Ideal Clients and Third-Parties You Need for Success

 How many of these ideal clients are in the area you wish to serve? You need to do an analysis of the age and income levels. Generally, geriatric care management customers are over age 85 or are disabled younger people with incomes in the range of the top 10% in your community. One gateway to your customers is the local overstressed adult children of clients, long-distance caregivers with family members who need help and live in your community, Another door is third parties, such as trust officers, attorneys, conservators, or guardians, who refer you to their elderly clients or adult children, as a trusted GCM’s, 

If You Want To Start an Aging Life or Geriatric Care Management Business you need to know you can make money before you start.

You need to do market research to define the size of the market in the area where your business will be located (e.g., how many people over age 85 live in Modesto, California, how many third-party target markets such as trust departments are in the town?). This type of demographic information may be available from U.S. Census Bureau reports local Area Agencies on Aging, local chambers of commerce, local hospitals, and even members of the local media who have done their own surveys. You can use the Internet to retrieve U.S. Census data in your area, and in addition, you can Google your State Department of Aging, find your local Department of Aging, and then find all senior services that may have data on older people in your area.

 

You Need To Understand Billing and Cash Flow for Success

You also need to know about billing. You might be making good money but if your cash flow is not coming in to pay your bills and staff, you stand a new chance of failure. Care managers who are most often social workers and nurses, often have an ethical dilemma with billing and are filled with guilt. That guilt keeps them from billing every hour and leaving time billed off their timesheet to help a client. This leaves them hurting their business and their bottom line over the short term – not being able to pay their bills and themselves each month. If this continues long term- the GCM is faced finally,like a slowly dying tree in a drought , death by bankruptcy.

Check out my  Online GCM Business Class which includes 10 modules on starting your GCM Business including two modules on financial management so you do not go under and lose your dream start-up

  • LEARN MORE ABOUT LEARNING GCM BUSINESS SKILLS WITHOUT GETTING AN MBA 

  • Check out our affordable price or choose a monthly payment plan

 

Find Out More 

 

Skills you will learn in My GCM Business Class

  • GCM ALCA billing skills to develop a billing system that allows you to bill 85% of your time, control your cash flow, invoice promptly to make a profit
  • GCM financial forecasting skills to develop a 3-year financial forecast Excel spreadsheet to track your basic profit and expenses and to track the number of clients and billable hours needed to break even make a profit, pay back loans, hire new staff, and take a salary yourself
  • GCM organizational design skills to create your business flow chart and job descriptions, and outline how power flows down your staff to deliver gold standard care to clients
  • GCM marketing survey skills to pinpoint your area’s upper 10% clients and 3rd-party referrals to market, to make your business profitable
  • GCM competitive analysis skills to set the fee per hour your market will bear for your services and to gather information from each, to position your services vs your competition’s so clients will choose you
  • GCM timeline skills to identify and list (in a manageable, doable order), major tasks to complete before you open your business
  • GCM business planning skills to write a 13-part business plan to create a blueprint of measurable goals for your business’s financial success
  • GCM marketing skills to create a marketing plan to develop lead sources, conduct leadgeneration, launch social media and conduct content marketing to gain new customers
  • GCM sales skills to position your agency to sell your menu of services
    through benefits to 3rd parties and clients through cold calling, 1-1 sales meetings, and inquiries, by knowing how to close the sale and sign the contract
    • LEARN MORE ABOUT LEARNING GCM BUSINESS SKILLS WITHOUT GETTING AN MBA 

    • Check out our affordable price or choose a monthly payment plan

    Find out More 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life business, ALCA business, ALCA Business Skills, care manager, cash flow, Concierge aging clients, concierge clients, GCM Business Flow Chart, GCM Business Skills, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, high end clients, value proposition Tagged With: aging business, aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging life geriatric care billing data base, barrier to billing, Billing 85%, billing for geriatric care management, business start up, care manager, case manager, critical success factor For GCM or Aging Life business, Ethical Dilemma with Billing, GCM billing, GCM customers, GCM making a profit, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Profitable aging life business, profitable ALCA business, reaching top 10% elder, target market for GCM customers, webinar billing care management hours

Video- Director of a Start -Up GCM or ALCA Agency ? Do you Have a Job Description???

March 21, 2021

 

What is Organizational Design and Why Do GCM Start-Ups Need It?

If you are a solo practitioner with a start-up, hoping to grow your company and profit- do you need a job description. You actually need your own job description first and next all your key hires plus a flow chart before you even open. 

Organizational Design as the Framework that aging life or geriatric care management agency use for their new  business to:

  • Distinguish power and authority roles and
  • responsibilities
  • Show how information flows through the organization.
  • Be ready for future growth before a crisis

Three Basic Steps of Organizational Structure

1. First, you tackle organizational structure- -each job in your company

Organizational structure is a system used to define a hierarchy within an organization. It identifies each job, its function, and where it reports to within the organization. … The structure is illustrated using an organizational chart.

2. Second, select the design- GCM role- job description- authority

Once an organization has chosen its structure, you can move on to selecting the design. Organizational Design is the process by which managers assess the tasks, functions, and goals of the business, allowing them to make decisions about how to group people together to best and most efficiently achieve their objectives.

 

GCM job description, GCM directors role

In the start-up aging life or geriatric management business, you must explain the Care Manager’s director’s role, job description, and how their power and authority flows down to care managers when you hire them. It is also a critical tool to break off your overwhelming tasks as a solo practitioner. That way you and know what you will move to new hires when you are financially ready to add a new employee without slipshod job description in a cobbled in crisis.

Next, you cover with the care managers who report the director,  what are their roles, job descriptions, what you will delegate to them from your director’s job, and how they take direction from the Care Manager director, their supervisor. You should also add clinical supervision here. Then you design your Administrative Assistant’s role, bookkeeper, and the marketing director’s role if you are going to hire one.

3. Create a Flow Chart

Following that, a flow-chart or organizational chart with administration and roles mapped out.

Learn Org Design and More my new on-line Start-Up GCM Business Class

Organizational Design is critical to your aging life or business success because you are designing the ” whole” and all the parts of your aging life or geriatric care agency and how power and authority flow through them -to give the most premium, concierge services to your client.

Check out my  Online GCM Business Class which includes 10 modules on starting your GCM Business including one module on Organizational Design with the job descriptions for every role in a GCM agency and recruitment tools to get the best candidate.

Skills you will learn in My GCM Business Class

  • GCM organizational design skills to create your business flow chart and job descriptions, and outline how power flows down your staff to deliver gold standard care to clients
  • GCM marketing survey skills to pinpoint your area’s upper 10% clients and 3rd-party referrals to market, to make your business profitable
  • GCM competitive analysis skills to set the fee per hour your market will bear for your services and to gather information from each, to position your services vs your competition’s so clients will choose you
  • GCM timeline skills to identify and list (in a manageable, doable order), major tasks to complete before you open your business
  • GCM business planning skills to write a 13-part business plan to create a blueprint of measurable goals for your business’s financial success
  • GCM marketing skills to create a marketing plan to develop lead sources, conduct lead generation, launch social media, and conduct content marketing to gain new customers
  • GCM sales skills to position your agency to sell your menu of services
    through benefits to 3rd parties and clients through cold calling, 1-1 sales meetings, and inquiries, by knowing how to close the sale and sign the contract
  • GCM ALCA billing skills to develop a billing system that allows you to bill 85% of your time, control your cash flow, invoice promptly to make a profit
  • GCM financial forecasting skills to develop a 3-year financial forecast Excel spreadsheet to track your basic profit and expenses and to track the number of clients and billable hours needed to break even make a profit, pay back loans, hire new staff, and take a salary yourself
  • The Business class set for a start-up GCM Budget and now offers a subscription payment plan for a start-up budget

 

 

Check out my Video on Why You Need Organizational Design plus Your Own Job Description

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, Care Management Organizational Design, case manager, elder care manager, Families, Flow chart, GCM Business Class, GCM Business Flow Chart, GCM Job Description, GCM Start -Up, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Organizational Design Tagged With: aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, embed =videolink, GCM Business Class, GCM Business Class on-line, GCM Business flow chart, GCM job description, GCM Organizational chart, GCM Organizational Design, GCM Subscription Plan, geriatric care manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, nurse care manager eldercare manager start-up, nurses, Organizational Design, Organizational Design of GCM, start -up elder business, start-up aging business, start-up geriatric care management aging life care manager

Do You Want a new Affordable Geriatric Care Management Manual ?

March 18, 2021

New Low -Cost Way To But GCM Operations Manual

Introducing my new affordable subscription model , giving entrepreneurs and professionals who want to start a care management agency for elders a low-cost way to begin.

You can now purchase my Geriatric Care Management Manual in its 5th edition at a low-cost monthly price. You can pay a small amount monthly and access the entire manual online to learn how to deliver 15 key geriatric care management products services step by step

The Features of MY GCM Operations Manual include
15 Care Management  Services or Products
A separate Forms Manual with 54 integrated forms  
Electronic PDF so you can edit

 

Check out my cost-effective subscription program  which allows you to pay $100 a month for 10 months and access the entire manual  online

 

 

 

 6 reasons why your start-up business or restart GCM/ALCA  business needs this.



 1.  The operations manual will create and maintain the highest quality of gold standard service /products in your business.

 

2. The operations manual becomes the primary tool for training your employees.

3.  The operations manual creates more time for the owner, by giving you written procedures for your business.

 

4.  The operations manual makes your business scalable thus performing well as it grows.

5. You can easily expand your GCM Business to a second office as the Manual gives you a turnkey guide.

6.With an Operations Manual, You Can Sell your GCM Business for Twice the Amount.

Find out more 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, Care Management Products, care management start-up, elder care manager, Families, GCM Operations Manual, GCM Start -Up, GCM subscription model, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Operations Manual, START UP Tagged With: 5th edition GCM OPERATIONS MANUAL, affordable Care Management Manual, aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging life care start up, aging life or geriatric care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, business start up, care manager, case manager, GCM Operations Manual, geriatric care manager, low-cost operations manual, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, start -up elder business, start-up aging business, Subscription Model

11 Parts of Care Manager’s Role With Family Death and Dying of COVID-19?

February 4, 2021

 

GCM Role is Working With Family In COVID-19

Care managers cannot be in the hospital with a  patient dying of COVID-19. They can support their bereft adult children, who cannot see their parents during the hospitalization, in those last moments of goodbye’s or after the death in this deadly pandemic.

In normal times care managers play a big role in end of life issues. They are their navigators through all five stages of dying, many times long before palliative care or hospice are called. Often GCM’s can help the family and client to bring in hospice or palliative care. But is COVID -19 they can offer guidance to the family through the sometimes weeks of hospitalization, intubation, their loved one is on a ventilator and ultimately often- death separated from loved ones.

Navigation Through a COVID-19 Death

 The normal final passage through life can emotionally charged.  If the family is following a long labyrinth to the end, in coronavirus, the blind alleys may be blocked by a rushed hospitalization, banned from seeing their loved one in the hospital, and not understanding the disease that is killing their loved one.

Care managers can find an opening through this maze.  Family dynamics and fear of dying can all explode a fraught crisis of care in dying of coronavirus. When vital end-of-life decisions need to be made, the stress of the responsibility and the seriousness of the situation can break into a mammoth wave of distress fear, and anxiety over the “ whole family system”. The geriatric care manager specializes in solving these end of life decisions for whole family system even at the end of life.

Facilitate Family talks over hospitalized COVID-19 Elder

Care Managers can facilitate terrified discussions outside the hospital, and clear the way for family members to come together to work as a functional unit around an unknown killer disease that preys on their loved one. Understanding the differing viewpoints is critical.  Knowing what a parent wants and does not want during the last days and hours of life help define and simplify the role of the family.  It helps the family bear the burden of having the responsibility of making decisions that their parent wants. Turning this around can also help families have some solace that they carried out their parent’s wishes after their parent’s death. 

 

Care managers can help family members handle the stress of an elder’s hospitalization and death by:

  • Encouraging routines, exercise, and social connectedness with friends and family
  • Advocate for them with the hospital staff to get updates in this chaotic time in hospitals
  • Help them maintain contact with the” hospital quarterback “ to get updated medical status and give input
  • Find technology for the family to communicate with the hospitalized family member  via text, telephone, email, or video chat
  • Support and mediate if necessary proactive discussions and advanced directive preparation in a rush if not done
  • Build a circle of care can help to reduce some of the potential conflicts,
  • Support them in having essential conversations, prior to needing  intubation, on last wishes if health status deteriorates  
  • Provide opportunities to say goodbye via technology
  • guide them in setting up rituals that can celebrate the end of life and give solace to a family during a time when there are yet no rituals for a COVID-19 death.
  • Work with the hospital to set up Zoom with the family to say goodbye to a loved one. 
  • Geriatric care managers do much more with clients and families but especially now with Covid-19 elder’s and their families facing a  separated, fractious end of life
  • Deliver a Good End of Life- Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

     

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

     Sign Up   

    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 care3.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

     

     See more about Cathy and her book Care Manager’s Working With The Aging Family

  • DyingGriefandBurial in the AgingFamily

Filed Under: Advanced Directives and Covid-19, Aging, Aging Community & Covid-19, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, ALCA COVID-19 Crisis, ALCA Role Death and Dying, Blog, care manager, case manager, CIRCLE OF CARE, coronavirus, Coronavirus emergency plan, coronavirus shut down, Covid 19, COVID-19 & Care Management, Covid-19 Death, Death and Dying, Death and Dying Care Management, death and dying care manager, elder care manager, End of Life, Families, FREE WEBINAR, GCM role Death and Dying, GCM Working With Aging Family, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Good Death, nurse care manager, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: adding end of life services, aging life and geraitric care manager, death and dying, death and dying in COVID-19, Death and Dying in hospital, end of life care manager, geriatric care manager, Hospice at end of life, Hospice Care, hospice for elderly parent, Navigation through END of LIfe, Palliative Care at end of life, Technolog COVID-19 in Hospital, Tools to manage end of life

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 18
  • Next Page »

Contact

Use the form on the
Contact page to email Cathy.

Email

Connect with Cathy

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

  • Home
  • GCM Manual New 5th Edition
  • Books »
  • Services »
  • About
  • Recommendations
  • Blog »
  • Contact

Copyright © 2012–2021 CressGCMConsult & Cathy Cress - Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management | Site Designed by Kissa's Kreations