Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Merging Care Management with Homecare Gives You a Competitive Edge.

 

Merging Care Management to Homecare Gives You a Competitive Edge.

Merging care management with home Care gives you a competitive edge, but you need to do a Competition Survey to find out how to position your merged agency ahead of all your completion.

Why should you add geriatric care management to your private-duty home care agency?

It can make a client shopping for a Care Managed homecare agency chooses you instead of your competition because you offer one-stop shopping. The adult child does not have to hire one agency to manage care and a second to do homecare. You offer an enticing package for the beleaguered, stressed caregiver desperately seeking help.

MARKETING POSITIONING. Product, needs,

That’s called positioning.

Merging  care management with home Care gives you a competitive edge and shows what makes you different from your competition.  Adult children in a struggling with their aging parents learn that geriatric care management plus private duty home care is an added bonus to families in a crisis. Thus a care management service can be an important differentiator for agencies offering home care. It helps you get more clients and outstrip your competition. So you need to find out through the competition survey if there are any care-managed home care agencies and what you can offer that they do not in their menu of services like care management like Move Management or Home From the Hospital, all offered in my operations manual.

 A geriatric care manager can do a great job of teaching clients and families why they need care. A geriatric Psychosocial and functional assessment and care plan is a very clear way for families to understand care needs and recommendations and to plainly see all the options for providing this care and choose your agency. The GCM is looked at as a desperately needed guide, not a salesperson, to get services started.

Care manager assessments are broader in scope than a private duty home care assessment and include not only family and social supports and home safety but spirituality, Quality of Life, finances, legal, nutrition, environment, mental status, depression,  sibling rivalry, dysfunctional families, relocation options and assistance and death and dying. A GCM assesses for alcoholism and drug abuse, domestic violence, sleep quality, sexuality, activity tolerance, personal values, and cultural beliefs. So they offer an in-depth overview of clients’ and families’ problems.  

 Your geriatric care manager’s care plan gives recommendations and options to consider so the family and client can make the best choices for providing this care.  The bonus to you is this lengthy, very valuable assessment is billed.

Plus, the Family feels like they have a very involved individual concierge to solve their problems

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New  FREE Webinar-Why Merge Home Care and Care Management

 

Webinar-Why Merge Home Care and Care Management

When-May 18, 2023 -2 PM -3:30 PM PST

The first and most important reason to merge care management to home care is money. You will be able to capture billable hours that you and now giving away for free. The second reason to add care management to home care is market positioning. Clients will choose your agency if you offer this merger and competitors do not. A third reason is that a care manager is perfect for introducing home care to family caregivers. Care Managers sit down with the family and review the geriatric assessment and care plan they created for the client. Last, this 1-1 care manager meeting introduces a concierge guide through the labyrinth of caregiving, showing exactly what homecare plus care management will do to solve the client’s problems, increase their quality of life and offer relief to the sometimes-desperate family members. Find out more by signing up for this free webinar

Learn

How this merger creates more Profit for both Care Management and Home Care

The Advantages of Merging Home Care and Care Management

Competition Survey to make third parties and Adult Children Choose you

Co-Branding the merged agencies.

Technology for both home care and care management

Co-Locating both staff.

Marketing Merged care manager home care.

Critical Success Factors for the Success of the Merger

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Why Phyllis Brostoff Says You Should Get a D on Your Written Geriatric Assessment

How To Score an A Writing a Geriatric Assessment

A written Geriatric assessment is the toughest skill a care manager can have in their toolbox. You want your A-game because they frequently go to elder law attorneys who submit them to court in conservatorship or guardianship lawsuits. As evidence, they must be perfect. You the care manager pull all your other skills of assessment, care planning, investigation of a case to find the right solution for the clients and objectivity. Plus what is not taught in gerontology classes – writing skills.

Phyllis Brostoff a legendary now retired geriatric care manager an ALCA board member taught this skill and published it in the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management in the Geriatric Assessment. Here is both how you might garden a D or even a flaming F and how to present that attorney your A-game.

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST ERRORS GCM MAKE IN WRITING A GERIATRIC ASSESSMENT?

  • Sloppiness: not enough information is gathered, or used to evaluate problems
    • You are a detective and need to gather all the information (clues about the case in the beginning). This means talk to all family members, friends, formal supports,  to understand what are all the problems and how will you evaluate them. This includes using all assessment tools and gathering all records, medical, hospital, etc.

 

  • Errors: questionable information, information not checked–

 

  • One daughter says her father is confused and needs her care– not a paid caregiver. Another daughter says that the first daughter has taken financial advantage of the client by withdrawing money from Dad’s bank and should not be the care provider. You do not check the father’s bank account to see that the daughter has made withdrawals for her father’s accounts, which she has.

 

  • Poor spelling, grammar, sentence structure

 

  • Even though your geriatric assessment has every section included and fully filled out, with your care plan and logical conclusions well stated and correct, with perfect recommendations —if you used poor spelling and grammar, the family or attorney will discount it because of your poor writing presentation.
  • Poor organization of information.
    • For example, don’t put information about the client’s depression in the Home Management section of your geriatric assessment. Mrs. Typhoon feeling depressed does not go in the home safety section. Do not commingle sections. Write a tight outline, follow it, and make your written assessment cohesive.

 

 

  • Conclusions based on assumptions, not facts

 

  • Make sure your facts are presented clearly. In Mrs. Typhoon’s geriatric assessment, you would not say Problem: Mrs. Typhoon suffers from anxiety, based on your visit where you charted.” Ms.Typhoon looked full of anxiety.” You would state, “When visiting Mrs. Typhoon on November 1, 2026, Mrs. Typhoon stated to the GCM that she very anxious and wanted to take more of her Xanex.” GCM checked with Dr. Feelgood and he said she is taking 10mg of Xanax as needed.

 

  • Lack of coherence between problems, solutions offered in recommendations
  • Your geriatric assessment must lead to coherence between solutions and problems. At the beginning of Mrs. Typhoon’s geriatric assessment, her daughter Ms. Tornado wanted you to find out why her mother had multiple falls, and what level of care her mother belonged in. You state she has fallen five times and needs a walker but never state where she falls, which is going down the steps to the laundry room or offer a solution which could be a care provider do the laundry or moving to a single floor dwelling or both.

 

  • Recommendations incomplete: no or not enough choices offered, no argument put forth to guide decision-making
    • Recommendations in Ms. Typhoon’s geriatric assessment are incomplete. As stated above

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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