Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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4 Ways to Keep Family COVID-safe if you go Home for Christmas

December 14, 2020

 

 

4 Ways to Keep Family Safe if you Travel to Grandma for Christmas

 

Are you planning to travel over the COVID river and through the mask-free woods to Grandma’s this holiday season?

How can you possibly stay safe? Do you trust your friends and family members to follow the standard safety protocols? Will they wear face coverings, maintain physical distance, and keep surfaces sanitized? Has anyone experienced symptoms recently or had contact with a person who is infected?

Answering these questions before you go may make those already awkward dinner conversations a lot less uncomfortable and may prevent you or aging parents from dying this holiday just as the vaccine is here.

CHECK THE COVID RATE WHERE ARE GOING

NPR has suggestions about traveling on the holiday  for adult children who must travel to Grandma’s on the holidays. This includes first checking out the COVID rate in the area where Grandma lives by using NPR’s coronavirus tracker to check this.

CHECK THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE INVITED 

Thanksgiving--2003png.png

The CDC says check out where others are traveling from and the number of people at the gathering among other guidelines from out very maligned by the Trump administration but storied science-based lead healthcare agency.

Travel Off-Peak Time

The Atlantic Magazine, a highly respected and historic magazine recommends, traveling off-peak or traveling a few days earlier, safer for you to drive, stay with Grandma or family, not friends and follow those basic guidelines, masking, distance, etc. Thanksgiving-Travel-2_20151119-171457_1.jpg

Read ALL & Find Common Thread of Safety

 

Check them all out and see what is repeated over and over and also what is feasible for you to travel to Grandpa and Grandma, stay safe yourself, keep elders safe and alive next holiday season after the vaccine.

Sign Up for My January Webinar  

 Working with Aging Dysfunctional Families- January and February-Long Day’s Journey into Night- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

 

Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday

 

Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional  families who found coal in their st

 

 

 Learn how to:family-charis1-226x300.jpg

Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders

 

Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family 

 

Master the 5 Clinical Tools – you need – to solve these problems with your clients

 

Learn Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families

 

 

 

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

Filed Under: Aging, aging family crisis, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Blog, Christmas Travel Safety COVID, Coronavirus safety elders, CORONAVIRUS Stay at Home Plan, COVID, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid Holiday Remote Visit, COVID Webinar, COVID-19 Webinar, Cut Off, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, HolidaySeason and COVID, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Pandemic, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, Safe Holiday Visits to Grandma, Telehealth COVID-19products, TELEHEALTH HOLIDAY PLAN, Travel Safely COVID Christmas, Virtual Christmas Virtual Visit, Webinar, Webinar ALCA GCM Tagged With: aging family, aging life and geriatric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, coronavirus and seniors, CORONAVIRUS WEBINAR, COVID & Holiday Season, COVID Driving to Thanksgiving, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID-19 prevention, GRANDMA VISIT THANKSGIVING, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving COVID Travel, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with aging parents, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family

4 Ways to Keep Family COVID-safe if you go Home for Thanksgiving

November 6, 2020

 

4 Ways to Keep Family Safe if you Travel to Grandma for Thanksgiving

Are you planning to travel over the COVID river and through the mask-free woods to Grandma’s?

How can you possibly stay safe? Do you trust your friends and family members to follow the standard safety protocols? Will they wear face coverings, maintain physical distance, and keep surfaces sanitized? Has anyone experienced symptoms recently or had contact with a person who is infected?

Answering these questions before you go may make those already awkward dinner conversations a lot less uncomfortable.

CHECK THE COVID RATE WHERE ARE GOING

NPR has some suggestions if adult children must travel to Grandma’s on the holidays. This includes first checking out the COVID rate in the area where Grandma lives by using NPR’s coronavirus tracker to check this.

CHECK THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE INVITED 

The CDC says check out where others are traveling from and the number of people at the gathering among other guidelines from out very maligned by the Trump administration but storied science-based lead healthcare agency.

Travel Off-Peak Time

The Atlantic Magazine, a highly respected and historic magazine recommends, traveling off-peak or traveling a few days earlier, safer for you to drive, stay with Grandma or family, not friends and follow those basic guidelines, masking, distance, etc. 

Read ALL & Find Common Thread of Safety

Check them all out and see what is repeated over and over and also what is feasible for you to get to Grandpa and Grandma to cheer both your loved ones and you in this COVD filled election frazzled time when we all need a dose of tradition to soothe our souls and stomachs – if you cannot stay home because of family worry or just the need to get out of Dodge!

 

SIGN UP FOR MY WEBINAR

8 Ways to Tame the Turmoil of the Holidays & Twindemic in the Aging Family

 Learn how!

  • How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday  surge
  • How to give hope to frantic children who call when their aging parent struggling  with Loneliness and isolation on the holidays
  • How to help the Aging Family make holiday visits remotely or safely in person
  • How to counsel the Aging Family to track aging decline &Twindemic risk in lovedones
  • How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
  • How to use financial forecasting to prepare for business growth during the holidays

 Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional family or do COVID Coaching of Aging Families so the client chooses you

  •  

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS  Thursday, December 3, 2020, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

SOCIAL MEDIA -PUZZLE CONCEPT

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

Filed Under: Aging, aging family crisis, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, Coronavirus safety elders, COVID, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid Holiday Remote Visit, COVID Webinar, COVID-19 Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, HolidaySeason and COVID, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Pandemic, Safe Holiday Visits to Grandma, Telehealth COVID-19products, TELEHEALTH HOLIDAY PLAN, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgving visits during COVID Tagged With: aging family, aging life and geriatric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, coronavirus and seniors, CORONAVIRUS WEBINAR, COVID & Holiday Season, COVID Driving to Thanksgiving, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID-19 prevention, GRANDMA VISIT THANKSGIVING, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving COVID Travel, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with aging parents, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family

Offering a COVID care plan product for Long Distance Care Providers

July 27, 2020

 

 

 

Initial Intake

The first step for the Long-distance family members (LDF) worried about elder exposure and hospitalization is an initial consultation and intake with the client and LDF.  This consult will identify the current status of the senior in the home environment.  This care management consultation can be done with a HIPAA-compliant video conferencing service

 

  • Required Legal Documents Family Long Distance Family Needs

     

  • – The first thing that the geriatric care manager works on is to find out if the older person has the required legal documents – Advanced directives, POA/HCPOA & GCM HIPAA  release because of the risk of both hospitalization and death due to age-related COVID-19. If these documents are not present, have a discussion with senior/LDF regarding their wishes, explaining that older adults over 65 are at higher risk for severe illness. The care manager will discuss who is to be the health care decision-maker and consult a family attorney or elder law attorney to complete.  If they choose not to use an elder law attorney, as time is of the essence in the pandemic, they can suggest accessing AARP advanced directives documents for any state which can be executed quickly.
  • G0-Binder

  •  If documents are completed, locate in-home and provide explanations to the family that they must give a copy to emergency contacts and physicians as required and place in planning binder.  In the planning “Go binder” list all emergency contacts with phone numbers/e-mail addresses – family, friends, physicians, pharmacy, professionals providing in-home services.  Also, list all medications and prescribing physicians in “Go Binder”.  Upload documents into caregiving applications like caringvillage.com so the long-distance family always has the updated documents.

JOIN ME FOR MY NEW FREE WEBINAR 

Create 5 Telehealth Products for COVID 19

WHEN. THURSDAY AUGUST 6

TIME- 2 PM Pacific Standard Time

Care Management businesses are struggling with pandemic close-downs.

Support your business bottom line, clients, and their families.

Create 5 COVID products

Products from sheltering in place through the hospital, recovery at home, discharge from an SNF, or hospital for local and long-distance elders. Increase your bottom

line as COVID spreads throughout the US and more shutdowns loom

Learn Step by Step How to Consult with Aging Families and Seniors

Choose the best Hipaa Compliant Telehealth Products to Remotely Consult with Client

  • Help a Local Family Help a Loved One Safely Shelter in Place
  • Help a Long-Distance Family Help a Local Loved One Shelter in Place

  • Help an Aging Family Help a Loved on Hospitalized for Covid-19
  • Help an Aging Family Help a Loved one Recover when Discharged from a

Nursing Home

  • Help an Aging Family Help a loved one Recover when Discharged from a

Hospital

WHEN. THURSDAY AUGUST 6

 

TIME- 2 PM Pacific Standard Time

       REGISTER NOW 

Filed Under: Advanced Directives and Covid-19, Aging, Aging Community & Covid-19, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, ALCA & Skilled Nursing Facility, ALCA COVID-19 Crisis, ALCA Products for COVID_19, Blog, Covid 19 Webinar, COVID-19 & Care Management, COVID-19 Webinar, GCM COVID 19 Crisis, GCM products in COVID-19, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Intake COVID-19, Long Distance Care & COVID-19, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Telehealth COVID-19products Tagged With: ADVANCED DIRECTIVES & COVID-19, aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, coronavirus and seniors, Coronavirus disaster plan, COVID_19 inquiry, Covid-19, COVID-19 Webinar, COVID-19& LONG DISTANCE CARE, geriatric care manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Webinar

Advanced Directives AND COVID-19- Do You Know When To Initiate in the Pandemic

May 5, 2020

Covid-19 Makes Signing Advanced Directives Critical

Advanced directives are even more critical with COVID-19 patients, who are often elders. The New York Times had a story about an older woman who was suffering from Covid-19 When she entered the hospital no one asked about advanced directives. After several weeks on a ventilator, the hospital asked about advanced directives, she had none. All her elderly sisters could recall was what she had said about dying when she was young.

WHEN DO YOU DISCUSS ADVANCE DIRECTIVES?

 

Advanced Directives should be part of your initial psychosocial assessment. Once the COVID-19 diagnosis is known with an elderly client, the care manager who has added end of life services to their agency is often the one who will initiate and guide advance care planning discussions. As difficult as these discussions may be, the burden on the family is significantly lessened if decisions about advance care planning are made before the client’s condition worsens.

Hopefully, this has already been done but many people put it off for fear of death. A recent study found that less than 50% of severely or terminally ill patients had an advance directive in their medical record.

Advance Directives

 Advance directives are legal documents that allow clients to make decisions about their health care and finances in advance of when they are not mentally or physically able to do so. These documents must be signed, dated, and witnessed naming another person to make decisions for you.

Your job as a care manager is the make sure the dying client has these documents:

• A durable power for an attorney for healthcare 

• A living will 

• A do not resuscitate order DNR (efforts to restart the heart after it has stopped 

If the client does not have these legal documents and wishes to create

them, the Geriatric Care Manager will suggest that the documents be put in place with the oversight and consultation of an elder law attorney. But if hospitalization is imminent, getting the patient to consider signing with legal consultation maybe your own option, with the family’s permission. 

·       ·      

Join Me in My Latest Webinar About Products For GCM Clients Especially Covid 19 

How to Sell VIP Clients a Menu of Products They Want To Buy During COVID-19 & After

When May 7th

Time 2:PM PST -3:30 PM PST

Learn in this webinar:

Why Sell VIP Products rather than Geriatric Care Management
Why VIP GCM Clients prefer GCM Products
How to Develop a 4 Season Menu of Products

VIP Products to Add to your Menu of Services

VIP services to Add to your Products

Covid -19 Products to offer now

Covid-19 Assurances & Technology You Must add to Your Products Now and in the future

 Sign Up

 

·    

·        

 

Filed Under: Advanced Directives, Advanced Directives and Covid-19, advanced directives& COVID-19, Aging, Aging Community & Covid-19, Aging deaths, aging family crisis, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, ALCA COVID-19 Crisis, ALCA Products for COVID_19, Covid 19, Covid-19 Death Nursing Homes, Covid-19 Nursing Home, Death and Dying Care Management, death and dying care manager Tagged With: Advanced Directives, ADVANCED DIRECTIVES & COVID-19, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, coronavirus and seniors, COVID-19 Deaths, COVID-19 deaths SNF's, death and dying in COVID-19, durable power of attorney, end of life, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

Care Manager’s Must Help Elders at Risk of Covid -19 Prepare End Of Life Docs Fast

April 29, 2020

Aretha Frankin died without will 18 months ago -before COVID-19. Now older people both famous and out of the spotlight are dying in a pandemic not seen since 1917. According to Aretha’s ‘lawyer, Ms. Frankin was aware she needed to take care of this but ” never got around to it”. This left her estate liable for potentially millions of dollars of taxes and attorney fees and a drawn-out timeline for her 4 sons to inherit the proceeds from her estate.

Franklin was, as many have said, ” a force of nature” and a woman who would be hard to sway. But care managers specialize in working with VIP clients and the rich and famous. These clients are often uber difficult to work with- entitled, narcissistic equally hard to sway. Aretha Franklin’s attorney might have convinced her that she needed to work with him to protect her family and her estate before she died.

You as a care manager may have to take a more urgent  approach by yourself or with the client’s attorney because the stakes are so much higher as

now elders are likely to die with this virus rampaging throughout the world, striking the people with comorbidity, like people over 65, the hardest

Most geriatric care managers work with the wealthy top 10% if they want to survive as a business as Medicare does not cover long term care. Only the top 10%, like Aretha Frankin, can afford it. But what comes from being a good care manager is knowledge of death. End of Life care is one of their jobs.  Making sure their client has all their legal documents ahead of time is critical at this minute. With COVID-19 that clock runs on speed.

Right now with 80% of all the people in the US dying of COVID-19 elders, these documents- one a living will- are ana important job of the geriatric manager, as death

may be shrouded and waiting around the corner for many of your clients 

Once the COVID-19 is known with an elderly client, the care manager who has added “end of life services” to their agency, is often the one who will initiate and guide advance care planning discussions. The problem with COVID-19 is that the onset of the disease can be rapid.  As difficult as these discussions may be, the burden on the family is significantly lessened if decisions about advance care planning are made before the client’s condition worsens.

Hopefully, this has already been done but many people put it off for fear of death. A recent study found that less than 50% of severely or terminally ill patients had an advance directive in their medical record.

Advance directives are legal documents that allow clients to make decisions about their health care and finances in advance of when they are not mentally or physically able to do so. These documents must be signed, dated, and witnessed naming another person to make decisions for you.

Your job as a care manager is the make sure your older client has these documents before they have COVID-19:

  • A durable power for an attorney for healthcare 
  • A living will
  • A do not resuscitate order DNR (efforts to restart the heart after it has stopped

 

If the client does not have these legal documents and wishes to create them, the Geriatric Care Manager will suggest that the documents be put in place with the oversight and consultation of an elder law attorney.

But During Covid-19 could rush an elderly client towards death like a mammoth mudslide sweeping them into a hospital where no one can enter, even the family.

Care Managers play a big role in the end of life issues. They are their navigators through all five stages of dying, which is the time before COVID-19 could be long before palliative care or hospice are called.  But in this plauge’s reign, there is little time to plan so the five stages of death are on steroids. So, talk to your clients now before they get into a screaming ambulance to the hospital where no one can follow the including you and may never return.

 

 Proactive discussions and legal planning now can help to reduce the risk of dying like Frankin leaving the legacy of her music, a soundtrack to her life but a family both shattered and at war with each other. The COVID-19 clients you see now could be in this position and their families will be left with no rituals no funeral no advanced directives and only hopefully a zoom family meeting to say their last words. Good legal guidance can also help clients make better decisions,  avoids all this other legal horror on top of the torturous death of coronavirus. Making a will or a trust now will save the family from adding to the burden of a lonely painful death.

Consider getting this product with my GCM Operations Manual 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life care manager, Aretha Franklin, case manager, Concierge Senior, coronavirus, Coronavirus emergency plan, coronavirus shut down, Covid-19, Death and Dying Care Management, death and dying care manager, DNR, elder care manager, Elderlaw Attorney, End of Life Care manager, End of life documents, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, living will, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life in Dying, Wealth Management Departments Tagged With: Advanced Directives, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging parent crisis, coronavirus, coronavirus and seniors, COVID_19, COVID-19 Deaths, COVOD_10& Advanced directives, death and dying, death and dying in COVID-19, geriatric care manager, Hospice Care, hospice for elderly parent, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

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