Working With A Geriatric-Care
Manager
When you're exploring a foreign country, a guide who knows
the terrain well can help immensely. That's just as true when entering the
foreign territory of caregiving. Here, a geriatric-care manager can provide invaluable
assistance for individuals and families facing challenging care decisions.
Geriatric-Care Managers
come from diverse backgrounds, from nursing and social work to gerontology.
These professionals can help navigate the tangles of family dynamics, round up
medical care and necessary services, keep medical personnel on the same page,
and cut through the baffling red tape of private businesses and government
bureaucracies.
Some of the tasks
geriatric-care managers routinely undertake include:
- Evaluating needs
- Connecting people to helpful services, senior housing, and long-term care facilities
- Bringing families together to discuss options supportively
- Hiring and monitoring home care personnel
- Communicating with specialists, hospital and home care staff, and family members to coordinate care
- Alerting families to financial, medical, or legal problems and suggesting ways to circumvent difficulties
- Helping with a move to assisted living, a nursing home, an Alzheimer's care unit, or other facilities.
Some geriatric-care specialists focus on assisting older
people. Others have expertise coordinating care and services for people of all
ages with disabilities or debilitating illnesses.
Although working with a geriatric-care manager may be
costly, such expertise can often save money and regrets, especially if you are
scrambling to arrange care from afar. The cost of a geriatric-care manager is
usually borne by the client or family, rarely by long-term care insurance. If
you plan to work with a geriatric-care manager, be sure to get a written
agreement outlining the scope of services offered and costs. This document can
also help you decide which tasks, if any, might be undertaken by family and
friends to save money.
To learn more about Geriatric-Care
Managers, or to locate a Geriatric-Care
Manager, contact the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care
Managers at 520-881-8008 or www.caremanager.org.
For more on developing plans and effective strategies for
the hard work of caregiving, buy Caregiver's Handbook, a Special Health Report
from Harvard Medical School.
Republished from: http://www.health.harvard.edu/
Updated: September 26, 2016
Originally published: February 2015
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