How to decide if your family needs a geriatric-care manager
DECATUR, Ga. — The holidays should be a joyful time of homecoming for families, but sometimes those visits also reveal that elderly parents are more frail or more forgetful than before. Discoveries like these may suggest that it's time to consult a geriatric-care manager.
"It's a very cumbersome process because you have to find all your parents' documents and follow the trail of their money over the past five years," Gratzel said. "I decided that my time constraints didn't allow me to attend to that. I commute to work, have long work days, and all my siblings are married with children and very active."
Now Mielach also shares a power of attorney with Gratzel to assist her 88-year-old father, now living on his own, with bill-paying — a task that his wife used to perform exclusively. Her father appreciated the help and began to look forward to Mielach's visits, she said.
"To me, that was a good use of my parents' money which we were going to have to spend anyway (to meet
While most seniors and their families do not go so far as to assign power of attorney to geriatric-care managers, members of this growing profession can assist not just with money matters but also with navigating the often complicated decisions about what care is best for mom, dad or another relative.
Sometimes they help resolve a short-term challenge such as Mielach did initially for Gratzel's mother or they may provide assistance over a period of months or years. Sample tasks range from vetting home health aides to assessing whether a senior is able to remain at home or needs to relocate to an assisted-living community or nursing home. They may also accompany seniors to medical appointments and ensure they receive the prescribed follow-up such as lab tests and radiology scans or find contractors and coordinate bids for home repairs, for instance.
Or when a senior has no spouse or children, a geriatric-care manager may take on even more responsibilities to fill that void.
"For people who have family, I become the expert in the family," Mielach said. "For those with no family, I become family for hire."
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BOOMERS' AGING PARENTS SPUR DEMAND
"There are a lot more older people who don't have someone locally to look after them," Gray said. "The baby boomers also are more used to paying for services and expecting high quality and results."
Another change Gray has noticed is that more people are contacting her proactively rather than in the middle of a crisis such as a broken hip or an Alzheimer's diagnosis, she said.
"I have to know that my client is placed in the right facility, and if they're going to be at home, that it's the proper environment with all the safety features they need," Fatoullah said. "The care management assessment heavily dictates how I do my legal work."
In the case of Gratzel's mother, all family members agreed she needed nursing home care. However, geriatric-care managers also can be valuable third-party referees, providing an impartial viewpoint to siblings or children and a parent with different opinions about what is best for the senior, Fatoullah said.
"I've seen a reluctance among seniors to want any care, and if a child mentions it, the parent may bite the child's head off," he added. "But some geriatric-care managers are very good with seniors and letting them know in a constructive way that they do need care."
A BACKGROUND IN NURSING OR SOCIAL WORK
Most geriatric-care managers come to the profession from nursing, social work or a handful of other fields related to geriatrics or long-term care, according to NAPGCM.
Before launching his geriatric-care management practice 20 years ago, Mielach, a licensed clinical social worker, was director of social work at a hospital. During that time, he became an expert in tracking down relatives of seniors who were admitted to the hospital and did not have obvious family members. Those responsibilities eventually led to him becoming a court-appointed guardian when no relatives could be found, and he realized that he enjoyed not just the detective work but the chance to improve people's lives.
He also sometimes serves as a health proxy, a legal status which allows him to make medical decisions based on a previous consultation as to the senior's wishes, he said. In a recent example, a client of 12 years had a stroke which robbed her not just of mobility but the ability to speak, and Mielach had to inform the EMS team that she did not want to be taken to the hospital.
"I always go into detail about what values you have so if a situation comes up, I can make decisions consistent with your values," Mielach said. "But in 20 years of doing this, I have never been so confident that someone did not want treatment as with this woman."
Geriatric-case managers typically charge by the hour, and rates vary from
Some geriatric-care managers may also agree to a lump sum for a particular service. For example, Mielach charges between
While health insurance policies do not cover care-management services, some long-term-care policies do.
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HOW TO FIND A CARE MANAGER
In the past, finding a geriatric-care manager was very much through word-of-mouth referrals, and asking a hospital discharge planner, psychiatrist or elder law attorney for suggestions in your community is still one good way to start, Gray said.
Another option is to consult NAPGCM's nationwide directory at its Web site, www.caremanager.org http://www.caremanager.org/. As of
One red flag would be care managers who say they got into the field after helping their own relative but don't have much other experience or have not committed the time to get professional training, Gray said.
You should also be sure to ask for references, and most care managers will offer a free 20- to 30-minute telephone interview so families can get a sense of how they work, their fee schedule and whether their personality is a good match, she added.
"It's important to have a sense of trust right from the start that you can work with this person and that your mother, father, aunt, uncle can work with them, too," Gray said.
More questions to ask include whether the geriatric-care manager is part of a solo or group practice and who covers for them if they are away, she added. Are they available 24 hours a day and on weekends, because that is when many falls and other health crises occur?
Finally, don't hire anyone who accepts financial rewards from nursing homes, home health agencies or other providers. Such practices are directly in conflict with NAPGCM's ethical standards and suggest that the geriatric-care manager may not have a senior's best interests at heart, Gray said.