Caregiver’s Toolbox Ep. 17: “Where to Start Looking for Care”
Caregiver’s Toolbox Ep. 17 “Where to Start Looking for Care” on Apple Podcasts
Click here to view our Podcast Directory
Ryan McEniff:
Hello everybody and welcome to The Caregiver’s ToolBox podcast, tools to help you with everyday caregiving. My name is Ryan McEniff, the owner of Minute Women Home Care. And today we’re talking about where to start looking for care.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Caregiver’s ToolBox, tools for everyday caregiving, where we give tips, information, and education on senior care topics. This podcast is brought to you by Minute Women Home Care, and I am joined by Janet. Janet, how are you?
Janet:
I’m really well, Ryan.
Ryan McEniff:
Excellent. Well, today’s topics are where to start to look for care. So last week, we spoke about the cost of care, and we went into that Genworth study. But also, we mentioned the blog post that people can look at for online searching to start their search for senior care services. But this one, we wanted to talk about actual people that you can contact, call up, talk to, shake their hand, and see where you need to begin on your senior care journey. So these are… I think we have about six or seven places that we suggest to at least start at. Reach out to people, and they should be able to help you out. So Janet, let’s get right into it. What’s our first place to start for care?
Janet:
I think one of the good first places to start would be the Council on Aging in your community. And as we’ve said in many other podcasts, this is an issue of whether your family member is out of state, coming to live with you, or if you need to look in their community to see what’s there. But a council on aging, they know what the resources are in the community, they can help you figure out what your questions are and what is the best setting for your loved one.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And they are there, provided by state and town taxes to provide services just like this for people that have questions, concerns, and just need more information on what to do.
Janet:
Absolutely. And it can also be an idea of, “Oh well, my… You can talk to even family, sometimes, when you’re there and say, “Well, my mom liked this place,” or, “Didn’t like that,” or, “I learned this”, so it’s almost like, in a way, a support group, too.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely.
Janet:
Just to sort out your questions.
Ryan McEniff:
And that’s a perfect segue into what the next option is, is word of mouth. Talk to family, talk to friends, talk to neighbors. Caregiving is getting so common nowadays, with the baby boomer generation getting out of the workforce, getting into their 70s, and getting closer into their 80s, that it is more and more common. And you’re going to see it over the next 10 or 20 years that your neighbors and your friends and your family members are going to have these issues. And it’s a great place to start on finding out how good a service is that they’ve used, and the pros and cons.
Now, one person’s experience with one specific service doesn’t mean that they’re the greatest in the world, and it doesn’t mean that they’re the worst in the world. Again, we’re here to play, to give you balls and strikes, and one person’s opinion isn’t everybody’s opinion. But it’s a really good starting point to find out what’s in the area, what other people have used, and what their experience has been with those services.
Janet:
Absolutely. And to share with family and friends, and try and see it through your mother or your dad’s eyes because you’re trying to make arrangements for them, not you. You may like a modern condo, and they may find it as sterile environment, or you may love broccoli and that’s their specialty, and they hate broccoli. So you want to… Whatever the issues are, you want to try and see it through their eyes.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And so our next one is geriatric care managers. What do you have to say about that, Janet?
Janet:
Geriatric care managers are a service that I think can be absolutely indispensable, especially if you’re caring for a parent and you are out of state. And they can do a variety of things, and you can determine what they will do or not do. We have had some of our own clients, as you know, that the geriatric care manager makes sure that their mother gets to appointments if she needs to go get the hearing aid fixed, right up to having household repairs, working with services or caregivers, or… There’s just a whole list of things that they can do. And they have good resources within the community, which is really huge because you’re trying to say you want to a ramp in the backyard so that mom can get out there with the caregiver. Well, if you go through the yellow pages, you have no idea who’s good, who’s bad, who’s going to cost you a fortune. And these people have relationships, and that can be really, really helpful. And you can have them totally hands-on, you could have them only doing certain things for you, but they’re very helpful.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And a geriatric care manager, at their core, are they a consultant or almost a concierge for anything that you need related to senior care. That could even include cutting the grass, finding a lawn…
Janet:
Absolutely.
Ryan McEniff:
…Landscaper to come in and cut the grass, and all the way up to finding the right hospital, nursing home, assisted living that’s right for your family members. So the way a geriatric care manager works is that they are paid in 15-minute increments. They’re paid hourly, if you will, but they break it down into that. And they usually cost about $150 an hour, at least in the Boston area where we’re located. So you can hire somebody to speak with them for a few hours on understanding where the top five or six places that we need to be looking at in the area that your parent needs, whatever services.
Janet:
Right. And they’re really good at setting up systems. They can work with the local pharmacy to do deliveries, they can work with the grocery stores and set up ordering of groceries and things like that, so they can almost be like an upfront cost that you don’t need that much of later on. But they’re there, and they can help you with those things.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And another place that I found that a lot of places are is something called BNI, and that is called Business Network International. I’m part of it. And what it is, it’s a group of professionals that get together each week, and they try to pass each other referrals. And the idea is not to have you call up and then give them your business. But the reason I suggest to BNI is usually somebody that’s been in there for a few years. You can, it’s, it’s worthwhile to trust that they might be a good upstanding member. If they’ve been in a chapter for multiple years, it’s a good idea to, to assume that the people like them in that chapter, they’ve been renewed a few times and their membership has been renewed a few times and that they have a good standing within the group that is there.
And the reason I bring that up is that they are probably going to be very willing and likely to talk to you on the phone, knowing that full well, there’s a chance that you, they might not be getting your business, but they’re happy to do that because of karma and that it comes and comes around and helps you out because it happens to me all the time where people come up to me and they say, “Hey, Ryan, would you mind talking to X, Y, Z for me just for 15 or 20 minutes to give them an idea of where to start.” You’re probably not going to get your business. They live in Rhode Island, but I just need some somewhere to start. And I’m always happy to do that. And, it can be, a good starting point. It might not be the best starting point, but if you’re desperate and you need to speak with somebody, check out the local BNI chapter and you might be able to find somebody in there.
Janet:
That’s a great idea.
Ryan McEniff:
And that kind of goes into the next one, which is you can also, Janet can speak about this, but talking to private agencies and visiting nurses, associations about what the services are.
Janet:
Yeah. I mean, the major difference between a VNA and a private agency is the VNA is under Medicare, Medicaid situation. And they are put in place with a doctor’s order. So oftentimes someone coming home from rehab or a hospital, the VNA will go in and they are following a certain plan that the doctor wants, but they’re not going to be in there that long. And a VNA has a good nose to the ground as to who the private agencies are that they feel are good because they can both be in there sometimes. And they have a sense of who makes their life easier. And they know that they can’t be in there indefinitely under the insurance benefit. And it’s helpful to the family, if they can say, “well, who have you worked with that? would be a good transition for us.”
And they really can be a good resource. And the VNA, most of them have social workers and they know who the private agencies are. If you’re calling private agencies. My suggestion is the first question you ask is, “do you service and list your town?” Because if the town’s going to be a problem, the whole rest of the conversation may not be worth it. So you need to know, “do you service this area and what do you have”, but they can give you idea of what their services are, what they can do, what they charge, all of that type of thing.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely, And then another place to start is with elder care services. And this is a little bit different than the council on aging. Elder care services are where the elderly, at least in our area can get Meals On Wheels, short hour visits from, from home health aids that are subsidized by state funds, things that are reimbursed almost basically by Medicare in the states. So they kind of like a VNA agency. They have, like you said, the nose to the ground, was that the phrase?
Janet:
Yeah.
Ryan McEniff:
They know the different companies in the area that are good, that they’ve been working with. And again, they’re not a private agency that maybe somebody is a little bit nervous about calling somebody like us up, because maybe we’re biased towards our services over somebody else’s, they’re going to be able to give you some points on, “Maybe you need private care. Maybe you need assisted living. Maybe you need nursing home. Maybe you need our services.” And they’ll explain what type of services those are. But again, they have social workers there. They have nurses there, they have professional there that have been in the senior care industry for a long time and their job or part of their job is to help people find the right services for what they need. So it’s another outstanding source that you can use and call up.
Janet:
Yeah, I think they can be very, very helpful. And they do variety of things. I was amazed at just how many different things that they can do.
Ryan McEniff:
It’s, it is an operation over there for sure.
Janet:
It is. It’s, we’re, we’re lucky to have it. It’s something, I think a lot of people, a lot of countries wish they had a similar system.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And so the final one, I’ll let you finish it off, Janet.
Janet:
Okay. Private, private, yeah. Private, your primary caregiver is an excellent source. My only caveat when I say that is there are some primary care doctors, and I’m not talking about specialists. You want the primary care doctor. Some of them are affiliated with certain nursing homes. So they are, can be a little bit biased, but that’s, it’s not true of, of all of them. And I don’t mean to paint it in a negative light, but the primary care doctor knows your mom or your dad, or you might even talk to your own primary care doctor to say, “What is out there if it’s coming your way?” Because a lot of times not only do they hear feedback constantly about who was nice to them and who wasn’t and how your mother feels about different things or one of the other clients does, but they also see where people that may have some of these other services, how they have been treated.
Are they coming? Are they making more appointments with them? Because they’re getting sick? Have they had falls? Are there things going on? And they want what’s best for their clients. So they know who the agencies are that they’re getting good feedback, or they see that their other clients are well cared for. And they’re usually very, very willing to give you some ideas. My primary care doctor has a nurse that works with her that just keeps tabs on what is out there in the community. Because if her clients stay healthier, it keeps the healthcare costs low.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And one point you brought up is some of the biases and the fact of the matter is, is that you want to contact multiple people on this journey.
Janet:
Absolutely.
Ryan McEniff:
Everybody can have biases. Like for example private home care companies can promise you the world. And under deliver regularly. We hear those horror stories about our competitors or, who it might be. I mean, your GCM, one of the things I’ve heard bad of a out GCMS is when they, some of them, not all of them, obviously, but some of them have suggested nursing homes or assisted livings to people. Yeah they might be a good assisted living, but they also happen to be living in the same town as those nursing homes and assisted livings. So they are not driving all over creation, going to different cases. They go to one assisted living and they hit four or five different customers.
Janet:
Absolutely.
Ryan McEniff:
You, so with a council on aging, not that there’s bias there, but they might have heard something terrible about Minute Women that we did once. And if they talked to 30 different other customers of ours, they’d say, oh, wow. They just had one bad case and 30 other cases were great, but they only heard about that one bad one. And maybe that turned them off to a certain service that they’ve heard about.
So you want to dig into three or four or five, or as many of these categories, as you can, to get the opinions of multiple professionals that will give you a better understanding. Because if you just count on your primary doctor and you go with whoever that person is, then you risk run the risk of dealing with that bias, or they might be telling you the right thing. And it’s a bit of a crapshoot while if you talk to four or five different places, and they’re all saying go to “X” home care or go to “X” assisted living or “X” private home care company, then you’re much more confident in knowing that that is probably a reputable company and service that you’re looking into.
Janet:
Absolutely. And the whole thing is you have to remember, you’re the customer, don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions and this can kind of be shocking sometimes to your parents or your grandparents because they didn’t question the medical community, what the doctor said, the doctor was God, but you treat it just like you were buying an automobile or something else that is going to cost you a lot of money and you want to know you’re getting the best product.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely. And it obviously if people are listening to this podcast, they’re interested in getting more information and doing their homework before they just jump into the deep end of the pool and start paying tens of thousands of dollars for services they’re not sure are right for their family members or if they need. So it’s a good starting point to look at these services and give them a call.
Janet:
Absolutely.
Ryan McEniff:
So that will wrap up this one, Janet, thank you very much for being here as always. This is The Caregiver’s ToolBox, tools for everyday caregiving brought to you by Minute Women Home Care, our podcast come out every Tuesday so you can watch out for the next weeks. And thank you very much for listening. Have a great Day.
Thank you for listening to The Caregiver’s ToolBox podcast, which is brought to you by Minute Women Home Care services located in Lexington, Massachusetts, call us at 1-844-best-care. If you have caregiving questions or needs. For comments regarding the podcast, find us on Twitter. Our handle is @mwhomecare. Thanks again and we look forward to hearing from you.