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The Caregiver’s Toolbox – Boston Senior Medicine with Randy Veraguas

Having private aides and nurses come to homes to provide home care services has become extremely popular with families. That’s why Boston Senior Medicine is leading the way in telehealth for personalized private doctor visits for seniors.

Boston Senior Medicine has taken the logical step in private home care, providing doctors with telehealth and in-home visits for seniors who cannot leave their homes.

Even for middle-aged adults, finding the time to go to the doctor has become a hassle, especially with the explosion of traffic congestion in the Boston area.  By providing house calls, they allow busy families to get critical medical checkups on their schedule.

For seniors, there are many applications where in-home doctor visits can offer peace of mind.

  • Firstly, when seniors can no longer drive.
  • Secondly, many seniors are medically complex and should not leave home.
  • Thirdly, you choose the convenience of in-home visits.
  • Fourthly, if transportation is an issue.
  • Fifthly, when fall risk and difficulty with walking apply.
  • Lastly, it’s more convenient and cost-effective for assisted and independent living communities.

Benefits of Private Doctor Visits

Additionally, this can help minimize the chances of hospitalization. Seniors will skip doctor’s appointments, especially if there has been a physical or mental decline. This decision allows seniors to conveniently get the medical procedures and check-ups they need while also providing their families peace of mind that they are ok.

The flexibility of private doctor visits is a crucial factor in the rise of these services in the Boston area. We wanted to examine further how these medical visits could work together with private home care.

In this episode of The Caregiver’s Toolbox, we speak with Randy Verauas, Boston Senior Medicine’s regional community education manager, about her services, how she found herself in the home health care field, educating the public about the benefits of private doctor visits.

 

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The Caregiver’s Toolbox – What Is Long-Term Care Insurance? With Mike Harrington

As parents get older, many families ask how long-term care insurance (LTCI) can cover their care. But how does it work?

Some families are fortunate to find out that their parents have access to this benefit, significantly reducing the out-of-pocket cost of care.

 

Long-Term Care Insurance Origins

LTCI became a popular product to sell in the 1980s. It became a cash cow for insurance companies because they received years of monthly premiums without paying out benefits. This trend continued for over a decade.

By the 1990s, many older Americans had purchased LTCI and assisted living facilities became popular with the elderly.

Assisted living communities started offering tiered care services, where a resident could “add-on” services as they needed more care, allowing them to stay in the assisted living.

Add-on options became extremely popular, and demand exceeded supply. Long waiting lists to enter assisted living communities became common.

At the same time, private home care was growing in popularity as well.  These two non-medical services allow seniors to avoid moving to retirement homes, and both were eligible for reimbursement by their LTCI policies.

In the early 2000s, the insurance companies’ payouts increased dramatically as the greatest generation started needing their benefits.

The insurance companies underestimated two significant areas:

  1. The increased life expectancy
  2. The increased cost of health care services

LTCI Limitations

Many companies exited the market and stopped selling policies until they were better able to understand the market. Some companies benefited those who had policies, while others were notoriously difficult to work with, hoping people would die before receiving their benefits.

LTCI became wildly expensive to offset the cost of the prolonged payment periods that were common with care.

If you wanted LTCI at an older age, you likely wouldn’t qualify for a policy. If you did, the cost was often prohibitive.

Additionally, most of the policies were to use it or lose it. In other words, if a policyholder died suddenly, all the money they paid into the policy was pure profit for the insurance company.

Over time, self-insuring became an appealing alternative to paying for a policy. If you never need it, it’s still your money to keep.

 

LTCI Advantages

Today things have changed. There are different options for LTCI.

While we recommend purchasing the insurance in your fifties or sixties, some products can help people in their seventies still considered affordable.

Additionally, some options give you your money back if you don’t use the policy enough, making LTCI much more attractive.

There are some great tools to determine if you should further investigate LTCI policies, which you can find here.

Don’t let the company’s name fool you – they’re a private company selling LTCI policies and not affiliated with the U.S. government.

If you are looking to purchase a new LTCI policy, we recommend speaking with Mike Harrington of Lifetime Insurance Planning, especially if you value personalized customer service.

 

LTCI Qualifications

There is a 90-day elimination period with most policies. This regulation means you must pay out of pocket for up to 90 days before the insurance policy will kick in.

Also, you need to prove that the policyholder cannot perform a certain number of ADLs (activities of daily living). You can typically check this through your primary physician.

If you’re using your policy to pay for private at-home care or assisted-living community services, you’ll need to provide ongoing documentation to show you’re receiving these services. Usually, the service provider and the insurance company can help you work that out.

 

Key Takeaways

Purchasing long-term care insurance is something everyone should consider as their loved ones get older.

While it might not be the best choice for everyone, having it be part of the discussion when planning how to age-in-place can help pay for a significant portion of the costs.

 

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How Health Care Technology is Disrupting the Traditional Market

Over the last decade, we have seen massive changes in technology.

It now has a role in nearly every aspect of our lives, including health care technology.

CBS News featured a segment on artificial intelligence and how IBM’s Watson supercomputer is changing healthcare.

Since technology is changing every industry, we decided to focus our next infographic on health care technology and how it is disrupting and changing the health care market.

Wearable technology will become the norm as we move forward, but what will really become interesting is who will be able to get seniors to use technology without them ever knowing they are using it? 

That is the biggest barrier to entry for many technology companies, they can’t get the seniors to learn and use the new tech

 

How Health Tech is Changing

We will go through the many ways health care technology is changing everything these days.

How doctors look at their patients and come up with treatments for diseases, how technology is improving automation. Will telehealth become the new normal?

Additionally, it is causes venture capitalists to invest their money in new ideas on a worldwide scale, and it is creating new companies that employ thousands of people.  These ideas are invested in because they have a chance to be used by millions, if not billions of people.

Reading the infographic below will show you how much health care technology is changing the old processes and how we are only scratching the surface as to how much more technology is going to change healthcare for the better.  The future is wide open, and how we use technology with children, adults, and seniors remains to be seen – the possibilities are endless.

 

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Add this infographic to your site by copying and pasting the text below.

50+ Best Caregiving Tools Online

It can be very frustrating when trying to find caregiving tools on the internet.  You know what you need is out there but can spend hours finding the right tool.

We complied a list of the best caregiving tools that we could find on the internet.  

 

General Tools

general tools

Eldercarelink.com is a resource for finding information on any topic related to elder care, including home care, assisted living, and nusing home options.

Eldercare.gov is a great place to start if you need to find elder services in your local area.

Maybe you have thought about getting a Geriatric Care Manager (GCM), start here.

If you need a senior move manager you can use this as a resource.

Family Caregiver Alliance has many great general tools for families to investigate.

Cost of Care and Payment

 cost of care and payment

Metlife Market Survey of Long-Term Care Costs – This takes a look at the costs of all types of senior care not only on a state-by-state level, but by each region of the state as well.  This covers nursing homes, assisted living facilities, home care, and adult day care centers.

There is some fantastic information over at Paying for Senior Care, they have multiple tools that I think are worth taking a look at.

John Hancock offers a Cost of Care Calculator, which is very similar to the Metlife Survey, but it is always nice to have a second opinion on the expected costs of elder care services.

If you want a downloadable PDF by John Hancock, this is a similar layout to the Metlife survey.

Last but not least, a third national and state cost of care from Genworth.

A hidden gem that many families and healthcare professionals know little about is the Veterans Aid and Attendance program. It is for seniors who need assistance paying for assisted living or home care services. However, it is not only for Veterans but their spouse or widow as well. The benefits of the program can save elders thousands of dollars monthly.

The Veterans Aid and Attendance resource website is here.  It can be a bit confusing to read, but does have a lot of information. If you want something a bit easier to digest, click the next tool.

Minute Women wrote a very detailed entry about Veteran’s Aid and Attendance, which you can find here.

The AARP has a great site that allows you to learn about long-term care insurance and gives you the basics of what you will need to know to make an informed decision.

Understanding long-term care insurance is very important.  There is a great three-page resource by Kiplinger that gives you a great overview of what it is and its benefits.

To get an idea of what premiums will cost for the daily amount of care you may need once you get older, the Federal Long-Term Care Insurance Program has three great tools.

    • One is an express tool that allows you to enter very basic information and get a ballpark idea of the monthly premium. (NOTE: This is not a federally run website/company though the name suggests it).

    • The other tool is an online consultant tool that goes more in depth explaining LTC insurance and holds your hand a bit more.

    • Additionally, there is a self-funding tool and calculator that will help you find out how much you will need to budget if you decide to save yourself.
    • There is a cost of care tool that is similar to the John Hancock and Metlife ones we mentioned earlier.

Hospitals & Doctors

 hospitals and doctors

Find the best medicare hospital in your area with this tool offered by Medicare.gov.  This not only shows the hospitals in your area, but gives you each hospitals patient survey results, readmission data, and any data you may need to compare multiple hospitals with each other and with the state averages.

This is a glossary of everything you need to know when looking at different hospitals and the terms used when comparing them.

This is a list of the best hip and knee replacement hospitals in the country.

Find patient reviews on your doctors countrywide.

Find the best geriatric hospitals in the country.

 

Assisted Living Facilities

 assisted living facilities

Find all the assisted living facilities in your area with this resource.

Caring.com can provide reviews for many different types of care including assisted living facilities.  It also includes user reviews and testimonials.

 

Nursing Homes

nursing homes

This tool allows you to see all the nursing facilities in your area and see what their ratings are, much like the hospital comparison tool listed earlier.  You can dig deeper by clicking on specific nursing homes and finding out much more about them, including their inspection report data.

U.S News has the best nursing homes by state if you are looking for the best of the best.

Home Care/VNA

 home care VNA

Understand the basics of home care and the different types of home care.

The National Association for Home Care and Hospice offers a lot of great information, as well as Medicare and VNA agency locator

Going back to Caring.com, they are a huge resource for private home care user reviews and options to look at. (Look at our user reviews!)

 

Family Caregiving

family caregiving

Unfrazzle is one of many great apps for the iPhone and Android that helps you keep track of your day-to-day caregiving tasks. 

This pill identifier tool is great for when seniors are taking many different pills and you are having trouble identifying them.

It goes along great with this drug interaction checker tool.

American Bar Association’s site (PDF) has a great tool kit on health care planning.

Download the RIGHT Advanced Directive forms, including health care proxy.

Aging with Dignity offers the “5 Wishes” which helps you and your loved one make difficult end of life decisions ahead of time by discussing and filling out the following information:

  • Who you want to make health care decisions for you when you can’t make them.

  • The kind of medical treatment you want or don’t want.

  • How comfortable you want to be.

  • How you want people to treat you.

  • What you want your loved ones to know.

Confused by all the legal documents and need guidance and need help?  Find an elder law attorney.


Worried about whether or not your parent can still drive?  Take thisinteractive online course from AAA.

40) Take a caregiver stress check to find out what is really bothering you.

Take a caregiver distress assessment test here.

Adult Day Care

 adult day care

Alz.org offers a great guide to an introduction of adult day care, including what to look for and what questions to ask them.

Making it’s third appearance Caring.com has a good list of adult day care centers.

Alzheimer’s & Dementia

 Alzheimers and dementia

Here is a wealth of information in the form of online workshops dealing with many different aspects of Alzheimer’s disease.

This tool is a great online library dedicated to dementia and Alzheimer’s.

There are GPS shoes so you can track where wanders go.

A cognitive test you can give an individual to see how their brain is working.

SAGE Test is designed to detect early signs of cognitive, memory or thinking impairments.

Forums

Forums

ALZConnected is a online community for family members of those who have dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

50) Caregiver Action has a huge forum of active questions and participants.

Caregiving.com has a very active forum, as well as a resourceful blog!

Caring.com home care does have its own forum, where you can ask questions and get a speedy response within 24 hours, if not sooner.

AgingCare also has a very active forum where you can ask questions and get answers.

Caregiving Cafe has a great page of many different forums available throughout the internet to choose from, and on top of that they also have a great blog.

56) There is another great blog and forum over at The Senior Care Blog.  It is update regularly, and they have an active forum as well.

Final

What tools would you love to see?  I am sure many of you have searched for tools that may not even be out there but are needed!

So please tell me below what online tools would help you out in some way.  I think it would be a very interesting discussion.

56 Best Caregiving Tools for Senior by Minute Women Home Care

 

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[Infographic] Veterans Aid and Attendance

There are millions of Veterans in need of help after serving our country.  Many of them do not have the resources to pay for private home care services.

With having no way of paying for services, many do no know about the Veterans aid and attendance program.  A federally funded program that provides means for Veterans who need services as they age.

Our Veterans aid and attendance guide was a huge hit with people and contained a lot of information regarding how to receive those benefits.  So, what we decided was to create an infographic out of our Veterans Aid and Attendance: Ultimate Guide 

This piece gives an overview of how to qualify for Veterans aid and attendance.  It goes over what the qualifications are and provide you the steps on how to get accepted into the program.

I am sure you will learn something new by reading this information, enjoy.  :-)

 

Aid and Attendance

Call us today at 781-862-3300

for a friendly conversation about how we can help you!
CONTACT US
Contact Us:

Minute Women Home Care
594 Marrett Rd #13
Lexington, MA 02421
Phone: 781-862-3300
Fax: 781-861-7721

Service Area:

Arlington, Auburndale, Bedford, Belmont, Burlington, Cambridge, Lexington, Lincoln, Medford, Newton, Somerville, Waltham, Watertown, Wellesley, Weston, West Newton, Winchester, Woburn.

Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts Accredited
National Aging in Place Council Member Home Care Association of America Massachusetts