Five Reasons to Hire a Professional Geriatric Care Manager for Your Loved One
Five Reasons to Hire a Professional Geriatric Care Manager for Your Loved One
Friday January 15, 2016
When caring for an elderly loved one, you may sometimes be overwhelmed with care decisions. Concerns about your elderly loved one’s medical conditions and financial needs, daily safety concerns, or just figuring out how to balance care with your day-to-day responsibilities, may cause stress and conflicts with other family members. How do you know where to begin to find the support you and your loved one need? Consider calling a professional geriatric care manager. These senior care experts, who often have backgrounds as social workers, psychologists or nurses, can help you identify what issues need to be addressed and help you navigate through many available options that may make your situation easier. Why should you consider hiring a geriatric care manager?
1. Peace-of-mind
Maybe Mom and Dad live alone in a different state and you are concerned about falls. Maybe your parent’s medical needs are costly and you are unsure of how to pay, or figuring out how to coordinate different care services is time-consuming. Whatever your concern about your elderly loved one, a professional geriatric care manager can provide peace-of-mind by doing a proper assessment of the situation and arrange for all needed services. With their extensive knowledge of available programs and services, a geriatric care manager can help you easily locate solutions to all of your senior care concerns. Regular check-ins mean a geriatric care manager can anticipate and redirect potential problems and concerns before they grow too large.
2. Help plan for the future
You don’t need to wait for a problem to happen before hiring a geriatric care manager. Employing one proactively can help prepare for any future needs. A geriatric care manager can also meet with financial planners and estate lawyers to find out what resources are available to the senior and to make sure appropriate paperwork is completed. Being proactive can help eliminate any financial and legal surprises in times of crises.
3. Help coordinate medical care
As we age, it is not unusual to be under the care of a number of physicians. However, not all physicians talk to each other and there may be miscommunication and misunderstandings on the part of both patient and doctor. A professional geriatric care manager can play the role of point person in your elderly loved one’s medical care, ensuring that care plans and medications align correctly.
4. Mediate family conflicts
Sometimes siblings may have different views on how to best take care of Mom and Dad. Other times one sibling may take on all the burden of providing care while the others help out very little. Or maybe the conflict lies between children and parents. Geriatric care managers can help play referee in family conflicts. As a neutral third party, they can take an objective view of the situation and help develop solutions that accommodate everyone’s needs while keeping the senior’s best interests in mind. If they are able, seniors may feel more comfortable confiding their true wishes to a trained professional.
5. Save money
Yes, there will be costs associated with hiring a geriatric care manager. However, in the long run the decision to hire one may save you and your loved ones money. A professional geriatric care manager may be able to connect you and your loved ones with the right services more quickly than if you try to do it yourself, saving you time and resources.
For more information, call Abramson Care Advisors at 215-371-3400. A senior care expert is available free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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