Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Avoid Aretha Franklin’s Fate- Help Elders at Risk of Covid & Prepare End Of Life Docs Fast

January 30, 2021

Preparations for Death a Hard Step for Some

Everyone must prepare for the end of life. When Aretha Frankin died a tribute to her was an armada of 100 pink Cadillacs at her funeral. But in spite of the glittery homage to her storied life and career, she died without a will.

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.

In the Year of the Plague Care Managers Preparing Clients For Death  More Urgent

You as a care manager must 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.

, these documents- one a living will- are an important job of the geriatric manager, as death

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

Advanced  Care Planning Discussions In Covid Critical

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 No Advanced Care Documents & COVID Strikes Elders Wishes Unfulfilled

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 at 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 plague 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.

GCM Care Planning Stope Elders From Dying Without a Will Like Aretha Franklin

 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.

SIGN UP FOR MY LATEST FREE WEBINAR

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

 

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part     

S

 

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

 

 

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

Recommendations

 Cathy is a great consultant who has helped me remain focused and balanced while developing my business and juggling other responsibilities.   I highly recommend using the operations manual as a guide for businesses, especially startups.   Also, tools such as Cathy’s competition survey, marketing survey, and Cathy’s book entitled Handbook of Geriatric Care Management are great resources to use now and future.  Cathy is the business coach/business consultant I needed.  I will always be grateful for the time and money she saved me during this process.  Thanks, so much Cathy for all that you do!  I appreciate you!

Patrice Harrison LMSW, IPR

 

 

 

 

Presented by:
CATHY CRESS, MSW

 

 

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

Helping Older Adults Stay Socially Connected While Sheltering in Place

July 17, 2020

How do we stay socially connected while social distancing? During COVID -19?

We all need contact with other people

 During COVID -19 this becomes harder as we age, especially as older people are at a greater risk to contract COVID- 19. Many of these elders live alone and are sheltering in place. But they suffer from isolation as they miss the social connections that bring joy to their lives. Some become depressed in the lonely world of shelter in place.

Connections promote wellness and are essential for good health. COVID-19 is not a time to completely isolate ourselves, rather, we need to take this time as an opportunity to foster relationships in new and creative ways, like technology and creative old fashioned pastimes.  This takes a family member to help with, which is part of the socialization. If you live long distance find a local friend or neighbor who will wear a mask and social distance or if you are a long-distance care provider hire a geriatric care manager who can place a quality of life companion with your older relative like Geriatric Care Management Agency like Lifespan that offers a Well-Being Program 

Use Technology

  • Call or video chat family and friends, if you have a computer or phone use facetime or Skype but better to use better technology, designed for seniors like   Alexa Show 8 
  • Have a virtual meal together invite your loved one through a link on Zoom and order a meal online for both of you at the same time.
  • Purchase Birdsong   for seniors an easy touch tablet for games and to connect with family and friends
  • Help elder join a book club at the local library as libraries are opening up again 
  • Help elder sign up for on-line local community college extension classes that might interest him or her
  • Subscribe to free online games for seniors through AARP
  • Have your older loved one play brain games for entertainment with Luminosity- https://www.lumosity.com/en/

  • Subscribe to audible
  • Identify what music they like and help them arrange to watch and listen on television or TV if they have an I Phone Make an I Phone  playlist of their favorite
  • Find art they like and have them tour Google virtual museum collections
  • Go back in time

     

  • Write letters or give you loved-one a gift box or notecards with pictures or art they like, print out address labels for them and give them an address book with family and friends addresses
  • Play board games, word games, or even work on jigsaw puzzles together when you visit.
  • Watch a movie together. There are a variety of apps that can help you watch movies together, but it may be easier to find the same movie, and for everyone to watch at the same time. Get the popcorn ready!
  •  Enroll a homebound client in a Senior Center Without Walls where they read books to them on the phone.
  • Take a walk. Fresh air is good for the body and mind. Movement is a great way to release endorphins in the body, which can soothe any existing feelings of stress but wear a mask, and stay 6 ft apart
  • Sit outside the front of your house with a mask on and wave to those walking by. The act of smiling raises endorphins.
  •  For a loved one who likes nature, if they like crafts make a birdseed ornament purchase a birdfeeder and hang outside the window where the loved one can see. Get a bird field guide for the area and help identify birds who visit the ornaments or feeder to feed.
  •  
  • Subscribe to audiobooks for seniors from your library
  •  
  • REMINISCENCE- a win win-as people age they love this and you get their memories

  • Give your parent Storyworth. Print the prompts and drop off to your loved one then pick up and enter using the dictation on your phone then send it into Storyworth. At the end of the year, they get a printed book of reminiscence.

  • Join ancestry yourself and bring your computer to your older loved one’s home and show them your family tree as you build it. They can give you family history and memories as you create the family tree that you would miss when they are gone.

  • Get out old family albums and have them identify people in photos then upload the photos later to Google photos so you have both names of relatives, stories of pictures and photos digitally saved.

 

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-19 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 to:

 

 

  • 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

Free Webinar Button, Badge, icon, logo. Vector stock illustration.

Filed Under: aging family crisis, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, ALCA COVID-19 Crisis, Blog, Care Management Products, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, coronavirus, Coronavirus Coaching, Coronavirus emergency plan, coronavirus marketing, coronavirus quality of life virtual program, Coronavirus safety elders, coronavirus shut down, COVID-19 & Care Management, Covid-19 GCM Products, COVID-19 Webinar, Quality of Life, quality of life -COVID-19, Quality of Life Virtual Program, Quality of Life Virtually Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, case manager, coronavirus, Coronavirus virtual quality of Life, CORONAVIRUS WEBINAR, COVID-19 SERVICES, free webinar, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, quality of life COVID-19, shelter in place depression, shelter in place isolation, shelter-in place social connection

You Need a Virtual Rolladex on Speed Now to Market in Covid-19

May 20, 2020

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What is a Rolladex on Speed?

During the Covid-19 pandemic, when many geriatric care managers are shut down, they need a  virtual rolladex on speed- or an email marketing and marketing automation platform. An email marketing database is essential for keeping your prospective, existing customers warmed up and ready to buy your services or products. You store your contacts or customers and send information that will entice them to use your agency. Constant Contact is the most common. I use it because it has great customer services for non-natives in technology like me plus excellent templates. But other alternatives like Survey Monkey and  Moosend and many others can be considered. Think of this as your old Rolodex on speed.

During this pandemic, this gives you the ability to let your third parties like elderlaw attorneys  and existing an potential new clients  know you are still here, still care about their needs and show them what preventative steps you have taken in

Advertise Your Agencies Coronavirus Universal Saftey Precautions

Use the e-mail newsletter to update contacts on your staff’s training in universal precautions and use of all the necessary masks, gloves, and PPE . You should assure that caregivers are required to take their own temperature prior to each shift and all shifts are available. 

Share Community Resources During Pandemic

You can let clients and 3rd parties, know helpful information about coping with “shelter in place”, in your town. For example, a list of all the grocery stores that deliver, as older people are not supposed to go shopping or if they do -the times when only they are allowed in the store. If your care providers can do that shopping you could add this to the newsletter.

If you do a Virtual Quality of Life Program for lonely and isolated seniors unable to get out during Covid-19, share your service in the newsletter. If you do not offer a Quality of Life program, point them toward geriatric care manager Nina Herndon’s excellent virtual quality of life program. 

If you have a partnership with your county health department, which is a very good idea, you can add that in your newsletter. You can keep customers up to date on Covid-19 information in your area. You can both use it in your agency and share it through your newsletter. Other ideas are adding photos of your staff in PPE or even staff making masks if you have sewing talents. Or there is  a volunteer group in your county making PPE for hospitals, share that and with photos in your newsletter

 

Care Management Start-Ups -Start an E-newsletter Now

Any aging life or geriatric care management business has to start out with a foundation of great customer relationships. Get an email marketing database now or before you open your doors and fill it up with contacts including old, new and potential clients,3rd party referral sources like- elder law attorneys, trust officers, concierge physicians, and all target professionals who refer families to you who need GCM.

 You, the aging life or GCM marketer, must connect with aging families who need your product at this time of the pandemic and at all times in the future. The best way is through your social media database.

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.

Join Me in My New Free Webinar 

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

Boost Your Sales in COVID-19 Slow Down

Sales have severely declined in COVID-19. Learn how to increase your, clients, through all your

products but especially 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

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

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 

Filed Under: Blog, Contract signed, coronavirus, coronavirus marketing, coronavirus shut down, Covid 19, COVID-19 & Care Management, e-newsletter, elder care manager, email newsletter, FREE MARKETING WEBINAR, FREE WEBINAR, marketing ALCA /GCM, marketing automation platform, marketing care management, marketing newsletter, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life Virtually, Webinar ALCA GCM Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, ALCA marketing, care manager marketing, coronavirus, Covid-19, COVID-19 PRODUCTS, e-newsletter, GCM services, geriatric care manager, marketing automation newsletter, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

Why is CMS Loosening Nursing Homes Infection Control in Pandemic ?

May 9, 2020

When 20% of COVID-19 cases are in Nursing Homes -CMS Rolling Back Infection Control

Insanely CMS and the FEDS are considering rolling back infection control in a nursing home in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic -when more than 20 % of the cases in the US are in Nursing Homes.

The mind-boggling idea was reported in USA Today. A rule proposed last year by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would modify the amount of time infection prevention must devote to a facility from at least part-time to “sufficient time,” an undefined term that lets the facility decide how much time should be spent.

Why do you need infection control in a nursing home- even before COVID -19?

Over 4 million Americans are admitted to or reside in nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities each year and nearly one million persons reside in assisted living facilities. Data about infections that occur in these skilled nursing home include on a normal day before coronavirus

  • 1 to 3 million serious infections occur every year in these facilities.
  • Infections include urinary tract infection, diarrheal diseases, antibiotic-resistant staph infections, and many others.
  • Infections are a major cause of hospitalization and death; as many as 380,000 people die of the infections in LTCFs every year.
  •  

Nursing Homes deaths May Be 50% of All Deaths in Pandemic

These infection control rationals were before COVID-19. Now, in the midst of this black plague of the 21st Century, it is thought, according to the Washington Post that nursing homes may account for 50% of death BEFORE infection control is further diluted by CMS.

Cities& States Reduce COVID-19 Risk in Nursing Homes -Feds Increase Them

In contrast to the blighted policy idea of the Federal government, Detroit, as a city, has tested every nursing home and in addition, is testing all staff and providing them with PPE.San Francisco is also now testing every resident of a nursing home. States like Maryland and Wisconsin and testing all nursing homes.

The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that at the end of the pandemic we may find out half of the deaths in the pandemic were from residents of nursing homes. In light of all of this carnage and potential destruction of the elder population in the US- why then are  CMS and Trump loosening infection control? Is this throwing salt into the would of frail elders, madness, an attempt to delete people on social security, incompetence at CMS or CMS following the bedeviled destructive policy of the Trump administration? We need answers but will we as a country get them in time?

Filed Under: aging life care manager, Aging therapist, ALCA & Skilled Nursing Facility, ALCA COVID-19 Crisis, Blog, CMS & Nursing Home Policy, coronavirus, coronavirus shut down, Covid 19, COVID-19 & Care Management, Covid-19 Death Nursing Homes, Covid-19 Nursing Home, death and dying care manager, geriatric care manager, INFECTION CONTROL & COVID-19, infection control SNF, Nursing Home Deaths, Pandemic, Trump Administration Tagged With: aging life care manager, care manager, coronavirus, Covid-19, COVID-19 & INFECTION CONTROL, COVID-19 deaths SNF's, Federal Response To Covid-19, geriatric care managers, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate

What Concierge Aging Life or GCM Products Work Best During Covid-19?

April 7, 2020

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

Tens of thousands are dying in the US and worldwide of coronavirus so a cruise ship of any cruise now wreaks of dying 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 expalin 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 Themphoto.JPG

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 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life care manager, Blog, case manager, coronavirus, coronavirus marketing, coronavirus shut down, Covid 19, elder care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Home care disaster plan, Home Care Emergency Coronavirus Plan, Home From the Hospital, Long distance caregiver, Move Management, moving parent in your home, Pandemic Tagged With: aging life care start up, Aging Life Or GCM Products, care management products, case manager, Certified Senior Advisors, CMSA, coronavirus, Covid-19, eldercare manager, geriatric social worker, marketing during COVID-19, marketing geriatric care, marketing geriatric care management, nurse care manager, pandemic, products vs services

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