s provide
a variety of services for seniors and caregivers. A Geriatric
Geriatric Care Manager generally provides a home assessment and then creates a
senior care plan recommendation based on the interview.
Of course, you are not obligated
to implement any portion of the care plan, but at least you will
have the necessary tools to understand
many of the home dynamics
that are often over-looked due to being emotionally close to the
senior or living too far away.
We also find that in many cases,
seniors will be more forthcoming with a Case Manager regarding life issues than they
will be with family members.
This may seem odd at first.
But consider that most seniors do not wish to burden their already
very busy family members. Sometimes circumstances can be embarrassing
to talk about with family. On the other hand, the Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager
is a paid professional, and most people are willing to get
their money's worth for paid services.
Why use a Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager?
Your Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager
can:
- Make a professional assessment
- Arrange care services
- Find community resources
- Assist with a residential
placement when the time comes
- Be a source of information
How does it work?
Home Geriatric Geriatric Care Managers generally do the following:
Step 1: Conduct an in-person
assessment
Interview questions cover a range
of issues relevant to your elder's health and living situation,
including everyday activities, nutritional status, safety, memory,
depression, finances, insurance, and more.
Interviews between a Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager
and the senior can be done with or without family members but if
you have concerns that you think the Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager
should be aware
of like memory problems, be sure to talk to the caregiver
separately. It is important that the Care Manger have all
the information that is necessary to do the best job
possible.
Step 2: Make a Care Plan
A Care Plan includes the results
of the assessment, recommendations, and referrals for local care
options. The Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager will go into great depth in
explaining some of the details of the plan, what led to the
recommendations, what you can expect, and prioritize the needs
list.
Some
things may be immediate and mandatory like monitoring medications
that are not being taken properly. Other things like
personal hygiene issues and diet are important to health and
well-being and therefore need to be monitored closely,
However, they are
seldom emergency issues.
Other
things such as comfort issues are a bit further down on the
list. The last are things that are not important to life or health but would
make life a bit more pleasant. From this list, you and the Geriatric
Geriatric Care Manager will have to determine what can or cannot be handled and
how that will be done.
A
Care Plan will also include regular reassessments. As we
age, so do our capabilities. Capabilities and functions need to
be monitored as time goes on with adjustments made for those
changes.
A
perfect example is memory. A senior may have some moderate
memory loss now but nothing that is potentially threatening.
Six months later those memory issues may have worsened or be good
one day and not the next. In such a case, an assessment
should take place to determine the extent of the memory loss, the
potential consequences of the loss, and what can be done to
compensate for it. Phone call reminders or check lists could
be two options.
Step 3: Arrange services
Even when services are not
available directly through the Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager, your
Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager will arrange for
the services through other parties.
A Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager
finds out what you
can do yourself, what can be done by other
family members, matches this to the priority lists and economic
abilities, and then helps to arrange for and monitor services.
Geriatric Geriatric Care Managers are uniquely
connected in the community. It's not like hiring your
sister. Most Geriatric Geriatric Care Managers have been around for awhile, know
the right people, and know how to get things done. In many cases
they can save you more than their own fees by making the proper
connections and knowing who they are hiring. They know which
programs work, know many of the care services and their
reputations, and can often help avoid trouble by working with
others whose history, strengths, and weaknesses they understand.
Even if you are local to your
parent, Geriatric Geriatric Care Managers can take a load of organization off from
your shoulders. They coordinate between service providers and are in
many ways, like a General Contractor. Service personnel and
companies are responsible for responding to them, not you.
In many cases, the service
personnel are even more responsive and informed with a Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager
than they would be with you. The Geriatric Geriatric Care Manager
knows what is to be done, helps communicate between service
companies and individuals, and often catch issues before they
become problems.
If you are remote from your
parent, they are even more beneficial to you. Getting in
touch with local service companies and monitoring them is
difficult if not impossible from 1000 miles away. The Geriatric
Geriatric Care Manager becomes you for the purposes of establishing and
monitoring services and needs.
Step 4: Monitor needs
Don't leave the Geriatric Care Manager
out
of the ongoing process of needs assessment. Your first
meeting establishes a baseline and follow up assessments will be
compared to that initial assessment to determine what if anything
needs to change.
Geriatric Care Managers are not in the home
on a weekly basis except under severe circumstances so it really
isn't all that expensive. But as professionals, they can
spot issues before they become problems and get them
resolved.
Communicate
Above all else, stay in contact
with your Geriatric Care Manager. Not only does it help you
understand what is going on, doing so helps to keep the Geriatric Care Manager
updated on anything that you see as an issue. By staying in
touch, you also let the Geriatric Care Manager know that you are
interested and are paying attention to what they do.
Like any other situation, a Geriatric Care Manager
cannot see everything. You have your own perspective and may
see things that they don't. SPEAK UP! Don't wait for
the Geriatric Care Manager to spot an issue that you already know
about. A good Geriatric Care Manager wants you to
communicate and will not be offended if you talk with them about
issues.
Geriatric Care Managers
are at their best when they work in partnership with you, your
senior parent, and the service providers.
Evaluating the Geriatric Care Manager
Like any other job, everyone
needs to be evaluated at some level. That evaluation should
be done by you and the determining factors are how well they do
their job.
Do they understand the
issues? Do they stay on top of things? Do they work
well with service providers? Do they communicate well with
you and with the senior? Are they on top of issues before
they become problems?
If you note a problem, be sure to
communicate with the Geriatric Care Manager. Anyone can miss
something and remember that you have a unique perspective.
However, if they ignore problems, don't communicate back, don't
monitor the performance of service providers, or are otherwise inattentive,
don't waste any time in replacing them.
There are good Geriatric Care Managers
and bad ones and the health and well-being of your senior isn't
worth wasting time with someone that isn't doing a good job.
A bad Geriatric Care Manager can also be a tremendous waste of precious
financial resources. Find another Geriatric Care Manager
that has the time and desire to work with you and your senior.
