Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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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

Can a Caregiver Assessment Avoid UnnecessaryPlacement ?

April 9, 2021

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When a Caregiver is so Overwhelmed that A SNF is a Choice but a Very Bad Choice

If the family is so overwhelmed by the care that they are considering placement, this threat should trigger the GCM to do a caregiver assessment immediately, found in the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management If the GCM is called to relocate an older person and the underlying cause seems to be caregiver burnout, this can be another trigger to use this valuable GCM tool. By using a caregiver assessment the geriatric care manager may find that building respite for the caregiver, through other relative or paid caregivers, a caregiver support group, or coaching the caregiver to make changes that make her/ his tasks more bearable and doable and avoid inappropriate placement of the older person

Avoid Elder Physical Abuse Though a Caregiver Assessment

 

If caregiver abuse is suspected, a caregiver assessment is a critical immediate tool. This is a situation where the GCM must contact Adult Protective Services, following their own state’s laws. Elder abuse can be triggered by caregiver stress in some situations. Depression that reaches a clinical level in a caregiver can be predictive of elder abuse of an elderly client can prompt a GCM to do a caregiver assessment.  You should also do a geriatric depression scale at the same time. Use the GDS and the caregiver assessment to help both the caregiver and the care receiver and avoid the risk of physical abuse and prevent involvement of APS making the caregiver and care receiver’s lives even more painful and chaotic and risking placement in a nursing home.

Mrs. Handy has Two Dads in Her Head

Let’s take the example of Mrs. Handy, a caregiver daughter caregiver She calls a GCM as she is about to place her Dad. Besieged by so many other stressors,  her own health is deteriorating because she cannot get any sleep, due to her Dad going to bed so late and her inability to rise above her old self when her Dad was 40 and she was 19 and what he said she did. Now he is 70, very impaired with vascular dementia, incontinent and she needs to be who she is in the here and now a woman of 40, caring for an impaired Dad in her 70’s. The care manager coached her to set a new boundary for him to go to bed early. She needs help in getting rid of the old parent in her head and putting the 70-year-old demented incontinent parent before her. In addition, she sees her doctor for depression, joins an online caregiver support group, and asks siblings in other towns to take her Dad once a month for a week. Her Dad is not moved to skilled nursing. This is what a geriatric care manager can do for her to help avoid unnecessary placement.

Find out more on my playlist “Caregiver Assessment” on My Youtube channel Geriatric Care 

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Filed Under: Aging, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Alzheimers, care manager, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver coaching, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, coaching caregivers Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life geriatric care, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, barrier to caregiver assessment, care manager, caregiver assessment, caregiver burden, caregiver burn out, caregiver burnout, caregiver coaching, caregiver overwhelm, case manager, elderabuse, geraitric assessment, geriatric care manager, innappropriate placement, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, secondary stressors, unnecessary placement

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

What are 8 Spiritual Quality Of Life Activities for Elders for the Holiday Season?

March 26, 2021

Spirituality Helps Elder Quality of Life Skyrocket  With on Holidays

Now that we are entering a season of high spiritual celebrations Passover and Easter-black-family-in-church.jpg it is important to involve elders who wish to celebrate the holidays. Religious rituals celebrated with family, friends, members of a congregation  ( even on zoom in COVID)offer socialization and reminiscence thus the quality of life so many elders and can return joy to their lives especially in the pandemic that was like maggots to the wound of senior isolation.

 

Religion Comes in a Filing Cabinet

Leonie Nowitz, a geriatric care manager who has a deep interest in spirituality and writes about it often, once told me to look at spirituality as a question  ” What is this all about”. As we age this question becomes primal, as we face death coming at a rapid pace. We wonder- do I go to heaven, to hell, or just energy or dust. Will I meet angels- my wife in heaven.?

Ms. Nowitz said that when you define religion, look at it as a filing cabinet with each drawer is a religion with it’s an answer to spirituality  ” “What Is this all About”. There is one for Jews, Protestants, Hindu’s Muslims, Quakers, The Environment- all religions and belief systems.

 

How to Find An Elder’s Holiday Joy

So find this ” What’s This All About”filing” cabinet and pull out the right spiritual drawer. One assessment care managers can do to locate the filing drawer, is a Quality of Life assessment . You can find a geriatric care management quality of life assessment in the chapter on Quality of Life in the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th ed, written by GCM Nina Herndon.  

Using this GCM tool, you will find where joy can be found again for your client. If spirituality is something that would increase an elders’ quality of life, here are some activities that you may suggest to an older client or their family, especially on holidays when places of worship have their most spectacular music, smells, and bells, and pageantry.

Spiritual Quality of Life Activities During Coming Holidays

  1. Make sure the older person can attend a seder or easter dinner with family or friends if the elder all participants are fully vaccinated. If not try to arrange a zoom attendance and have the ritual dinner home delivered
  2. If an older person has dementia, you can offer to reminisce through questions about how they spent holidays like Passover or Easter when they were young.
  3. If the elder is homebound, has dementia, or cannot go out reconnect him or her with his spiritual background through arranging a ritual Easter or Passover dinner made or delivered.
  4. If a ritual holiday meal is not a good choice play familiar holiday prayer, music, etc.   
  5. If you have a lonely or isolated client with no local family who wishes to return to a religious group over the holidays, reconnect them by arranging their attendance at a seder or Easter brunch or dinner, with a small fully vaccinated group from a congregation 0f a local church or synagogue or through a zoom holiday meal event or service.
  6. On Passover or Easter arrange for the elder to listen to holiday spiritual music, or readings from a sacred text from their own religion or watch a service on television or streaming via computer.
  7. Decorate their room with holiday decorations that represents their own religious holiday.
  8. If attending a holiday meal is not possible and a holiday event will take place like an Easter egg hunt have the older person attend if fully vaccinated or watch on zoom.

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Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, case manager, Dementia Activities, Dementia and Spirituality, elder care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life, Spiritual Quality of Life Tagged With: aging life care manager, assessing for quality of life, care manager, case manager, demential and spirituality, geriatric care manager, nurse care manager, spirital assessment, spiritual assessment, spiritual supports in aging, spirituality in aging

Do You the Have Business Skills to Run a ALCA or GCM Agency ? Watch This Video

March 23, 2021

You chose to Start A Business

You need clinical skills to start and run an aging life or geriatric care management agency but you must have business skills as well- It IS A Business.

 

Geriatric care managers need to understand revenue- how they make money to be financially to make a profit. Revenue does come from billing – but poor billing is very unprofitable billing. Money-losing billing is anything less than 85% of your client’s time. When you bill less than 85% you actually start losing money. Revenue is the high tide of money and is calculated by the number of clients you serve, new clients per month, number of clients canceling service. % of the time billed (the goal is 85%) and what you charge for travel time.

Competition Survey Mandatory To Start A Business

You need to know how to do a competition survey to measure whether you have too much competition and what your competitors offer so you can offer more and be chosen. You should also identify and survey other direct GCM competitors like the non-profit 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.

Do You Understand Branding?

You need to know branding. Aging life or geriatric care manager must use different branding and a  marketing approach that messages hyper-attention to seamless care to attract these top 10% concierge clients who can afford your services long term.

Do You Have a Marketing Strategy?

Marketing Strategy Business concept. The meeting at the white office table

Marketing your existing or new Aging Life or GCM business is vital to growth, but where you spend your marketing dollars? What marketing tactics make the most sense for you? Where will you reach your concierge client base best?

This is where your marketing strategy comes into play. Before the business can start generating large revenue, a concierge marketing strategy and sales techniques must be in place.

Your marketing message must be communicated to the concierge customer. You need to how to write a business plan, use social media to attract customers, how to do 1-1 marketing to third parties-.

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

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life care manager, ALCA Business Skills, Blog, branding, Branding GCM Business, care management market sizing, care management start-up, case manager, elder care manager, Families, GCM Business Skills, GCM Start -Up, Geriatric Assessment, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, marketing care management, Marketing copy, marketing geriatric care management, Marketing Home Care, marketing pitch, Marketing plan, Marketing Strategy, marketing to concierge clients, marketing to long distance adult children, marketing to upper 10%, nurse care manager, On-line GCM Business Class, Webinar Tagged With: aging life care manager, aging life or geriatric care marketing plan, Billing 85%, Business Plan, business start up, care manager, case manager, critical success factor For GCM or Aging Life business, GCM billing, GCM Business Class, geriatric care management business, geriatric care manager, marketing skills, nurse care manager eldercare manager start-up

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