Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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10 Alarm Bells to Give ” Just Shopping” Long Distance Callers Before Holiday

December 24, 2020

 

You will be Showered With Calls Over the Holidays

Long-distance family members from nearly normal or dysfunctional families will call you frantically from now on. 

Why?

It’s almost  Christmas, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving just passed but they could not see their older parents because of the COVID Risk.

They are having to manage their over 65 Mom and Dad’s Shelter in place from afar plus oversee their own families risk plus their own COVID laden holiday. These long-distance family caregivers were already reaching

burnout from constant pre-COVID travel and caring on top of their own work-life demands.

They are reaching implosion so they are going to call you.

Test to Give the Burnt Out Caregiver Calls FOR Information Before the Holidays

If they call for information before the holiday and are not ready to move forward, you can proactively offer them questions from this list of alarm bells that they can answer now or they can monitor during now and New Year holiday that could trigger engaging your services after they compare notes on a post-holiday call with you.

Below is a list of red flags. If they see any red signals on Thanksgiving, Hanukkah,

remotely or in-person if they take the very dangerous risk of travel on Christmas-encourage them that is the time to do something about it by hiring you as a care manager. You can question them with this  a checklist of worrisome  signs that signal the need for a local geriatric care manager,

 

Alarm Bells List – Dealing with Long Distance Aging Relatives  Before or During the Holidays

  • Unpaid bills if long-distance family members monitor bill pay from afar
  • Missed appointments with their physicians that  long-distance care provider monitor with their doctors
  • Clutter reported by neighbors, friends local senior agencies a home that was once always neat
  • Weight loss reported by the aging parents Dr’s or local visitors
  • Memory loss, change in short-term memory when they zoom, call facetime, etc.
  • Poor grooming for a person who was once meticulously, observed by local visitors friends senior agencies food delivery who visit.
  • Reports of getting lost
  • Reports of wandering
  • Refusing to go to holiday  religious services with friends or church transportation  to holiday religious services
  • refusing any suggestion or conversely agreeing to everything with-out consideration
  • Mood swings, getting angry when normally easy going
  • Refusing to go to medical providers
  • Not taking care of activities of daily living: cooking, bathing, dressing, housekeeping, etc.
  • Entering contests, credit card maxed out on shopping channels
  •  Set up a meeting when the holidays end. You have helped them proactively, begin to engage your services.

    Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

    5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays- 

                 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 stocking.      

    Learn how to!

    • 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 Vital Clinical Tools, you to solve client problems
    • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
    • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

     SIGN UP NOW

     

     

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

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Alarm Bells For Long Distance Family, Blog, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, Close The Sale, Closing a GCM Sale, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, HolidaySeason and COVID, Long Distance Care, Long Distance Care & COVID-19, Long distance caregiver, long distance caregiver burnout, Long distance family impostion, Long Distance Safety Travel COVID, Long Distance travel Holidays, Long Term Care Coverage, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, eldercare manager, geriatric care manager, holiday burn out, Holidays calls to GCM's, long distance care provider, Long distance family burn out, nurse care manager, patient advocate

Use a Patient Advocate- I Did and Am One Right Now

February 24, 2020

My husband is having Open Heart Surgery Today and I am His Patient Advocate.

Like all aging life or geriatric care managers, I use my own GCM tools to manage my own care. One tool was not to advocate for myself while in the hospital .l had a patient advocate stay with me when I had a knee replacement and hip replacements. I learned the importance of having someone advocate for you from fellow geriatric care manager Anne Rosenthall when I had my hip replaced many years ago.

No matter how good the hospital, mistakes can happen and you need, a patient advocate. My patient advocates were very good friends who were both kind and assertive. Two were actual conservator friends. They spoke for me when I was recovering from surgery and unable to speak for myself. My husband took this roll when I had my first hip replaced.

Now I am taking on the role myself for my husband, who is having open heart surgery today at Stanford Hospital. ( See photo-he is with me at 6 AM this morning) I am staying in his room, as I arranged with my own previous hospitalizations. This time we are in Stanford Hospital’s brand new wing and I am writing this from their Caregiver Center, where I will be all day while my husband is in surgery.

The Center a wonder of caregiver resources with sleeping couches ( we have been up since 3 AM to make his 6 AM appointment for surgery), a chapel and a caregiver consultant to help you. My daughter Kali is sleeping on one of the couches, the other daughter  Jill reading on the sunny deck and I am blogging in their tech center for caregivers, looking at the Coastal mountains rimming the Pacific, here in Palo Alto. We have 6 hours to wait until my husband is in ICU and we can see him.

What is a patient advocate?

An effective advocate is someone you trust who is willing to act on your behalf as well as someone who can work well with other members of your healthcare team such as your doctors and nurses. An advocate may be a member of your family, such as a spouse, a child, another family member, or a close friend. Another type of advocate is a professional advocate. Hospitals usually have professionals who play this role called Patient Representatives or Patient Advocates. Social workers, nurses, and chaplains may also fill this role. These advocates can often be very helpful in cutting through red tape. It is helpful to find out if your hospital has professional advocates available, and how they may be able to help you.

I will blog through my journey this week, but I expect only the best results and Stanford is a great hospital and my three-woman team of my 2 daughters ( see us above – Pete with hearts on his face) and I will be excellent patient advocates.

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life or geriatric care manager, aging parent care, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, geritric care manager, knee replacment, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, patient advocate

Mom Burnt The Turkey Dad’s Wandered Off – Call 411 Care Manager

October 26, 2018

Aging Families gather for the holidays starting Thanksgiving  November 22. When they arrive at Mom and Dad’s home, they may find the older parents they dreaded. 

Mom forgot to buy the turkey or she burned it to a crisp.

Her neat as a pin ensemble is greasy and rumpled. Then she reports Dad has wandered down the street.

 

This is the start of the holiday from hell that many adult children face. After the son buys a new turkey, finally finds Dad, he may take a break and call 911 Aging Life- or the daughter grabs her computer and googles a geriatric care manager.

 

When you get that” red phone” call from a desperate adult child – are you ready??

Can you sell your services and do an intake and get a contract signed over the phone?

Do you have a toolbox of GCM tools that can calm a family and get them stabilized by New Year?

Are you prepared for the growth in business you can get over the holidays through a financial forecast?

Learn how to handle these nuclear threats to the aging family.

 

1. Subscribe to my Aging Life Geriatric Care Management  YouTube Channel Geriatric Care 1  to watch Playlist 22- Holiday Meltdown in the Aging Family and find out how to solve that frantic call and get new clients. 

2.Join me in my new Webinar

5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families   

During the busiest season for care management referrals-

 

You Will Learn:

  • How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
  • How to sell services to desperate adult child callers    
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
  • How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
  • How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
    • Sign Up

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Blog, care management start-up, care manager, cash flow, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, inquiry call, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Webinar Tagged With: aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, crisis with aging parents, eldercare manager, geraitric care manager, geriatric care manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, patient advocate

Elementary Ms. Holmes – Merging Multiple Assessments into Care Plan

January 9, 2017

 

If you are a care manager and have an elderly client is need of your geriatric care management or eldercare services -initially you do psychosocial and functional assessment Next, you feel depression is present so you do a Geriatric Depression scale. You always screen for dementia so you do a mental status exam . You make a home safety assessment part of every client assessment so you complete a home safety assessment. Then you have an exhausted caregiver who is a live-in girlfriend, up in age herself so you so a caregiver assessment . Do you do a care plan with each of these assessments? Yes and no. Yes, do you give the family ,trust officer,elderlaw attorney- all third parties  seven care plans? No, All 7 care plans are integrated into one care plan. How do you do this? We will be covering this in my new webinar January 25.

Learn more about creating a care plan, doing multiple assessments and writing a geriatric assessment in my free webinar ‘ Writing a Winning Geriatric Assessment ” January 25 . Sign-up . In the meanwhile watch my You Tube Channel- Geriatric Care 1 and the segment on merging multiple into one care plans- subscribe for latest playlist on writing a geriatric assessment coming soon.

 

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Care Plan, Families, Geriatric Assessment, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Long Distance Care, Siblings, Webinar Tagged With: aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, elder care manager, elder patient advocate, eldercare, elderlaw attorney, nurse care manager, nurse navigator, patient advocate

Mom Burnt The Turkey Dad’s Wandered Off – Call 411 Care Manager

November 20, 2016

Aging Families gather for the holidays starting November 24. When they arrive to Mom and Dad’s home, they may find the older parents they dreaded. 

Mom forgot to buy the turkey or she burned it to a crisp.

Her neat as a pin ensemble is greasy and rumpled. Then she reports Dad has wandered down the street.

 

This is the start of the holiday from hell that many adult children face. After the son buys a new turkey, finally finds Dad, he may take a break and call 911 Aging Life- or the daughter grabs her computer and googles a geriatric care manager.

 

When you get that” red phone” call from a desperate adult child – are you ready??

Learn how to handle these nuclear threats to the aging family.

 

Subscribe to my Aging Life Geriatric Care Management  You Tube Channel Geriatric Care 1  to watch Playlist 22- Holiday Meltdown in the Aging Family and find out how to solve those frantic call and get new clients. 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager Tagged With: aging family crisisaging life care manager, care manager, case manager, eldercare manager, geriatric care manager, nurse care manager, patient advocate

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