ph: 1-800-375-0595
info
OuR SERVICES
Geriatric Care Management for Families
Professional Geriatric Care Managers (PGCMs) are health and human services specialists who help families care for older relatives, while encouraging as much independence as possible. The care manager may be trained in any of a number of fields related to long-term care, including, but not limited to, nursing, gerontology, social work, or psychology, with a specialized focus on issues related to aging and elder care.
The care manager acts as a guide and advocate -- identifying problems and offering solutions, from assessment of an aging parent's needs to addressing the life change of a family affected by Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, or symptoms of dementia.
Caregiver Support at the Workplace
When a company decides to offer the Elder Life Planning for Organizations, their employees and extended family members will have access to our nationwide counseling services. Employees will be given a toll-free number to call for assistance. To learn more, visit the ELPO Web site.
Public Speaking and Educational Programs
Bob O'Toole has contributed chapters to two books on elder care and geriatric care management issues, and has written numerous articles on the delivery of elder care in the private marketplace. His articles have appeared in Geriatric Care Management Journal, Compensation and Benefits Management, EAP Digest, Workspan, Health Insurance Underwriter and Inside Case Management.
An experienced speaker and workshop leader on elder caregiving issues and financing the costs of long-term care, O'Toole has been a speaker at the national conferences of American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, National Private Duty Association, American Association for the Continuity of Care, & The Voluntary Hospitals of America among others.
Bob has also been a lecturer in gerontology at Boston University, Northeastern University, the University of New Hampshire and Stonehill College.
Free Small Business Development Programs for Eldercare Professionals
Marketing Your Eldercare Professional Services To Community Banks
By providing our turnkey Elder Life Planning services programs, a bank, can build closer relationships with maturing multi-generational families (aging baby boomers and seniors) that represent the lion’s share of deposits in most banks.Banks who pay attention to these critical customer segments will not only preserve their customer base but will see a substantial increase in attractive new depositors resulting in improved profitability..
PARTICIPATE IN OUR ON LINE COMMUNITY OF ELDERCARE PROFESSIONALS
Visit http://www.eldercaredecisions.com, the home of The National Eldercare Professionals Community (NEPC). NEPC is a multidisciplinary group of INDIVIDUAL members.
Members include geriatric social workers, registered nurses, elder law attorneys, geriatric care managers, durable medical equipment providers, long-term care insurance brokers, assisted living facility personnel, nursing home and rehabilitation professionals, reverse mortgage brokers, private duty home care providers, and home based technology and home modification specialists among others.
Membership in this professional community is free to individual professionals. Multiple members from the same organizations may also set up their own free listing.
The costs of developing and maintaining this on-line community are underwritten by our sponsors who share the goals and values of our professional community. All member applications will be pre-approved before your membership is activated.
More than simply another on-line directory, Eldercaredecisions.com provides a powerful and comprehensive set of tools that allow each member to control his or her content. Network with a nationwide multidisciplinary group of eldercare professionals in a variety of ways. Raise your visibility and expand your referral network while sharing your ideas and learning new and innovative approaches to grow your eldercare business.
At www.eldercaredecisions.com, NEPC members can stay up-to-date with eldercare news, resources and trends in the rapidly growing community of eldercare entrepreneurs. At eldercaredecisions.com you are in control. You can always directly edit your own listing without going through a web master. Submit notes and photos, maintain your personal profile page, and much more!Advisory Services on Alternative Payment Methods To Cover the Costs of Long-term Care
America is rapidly moving to a two-tiered system of long-term care services.
One provides a broad spectrum of services ranging from high quality home care to elegant and well staffed retirement communities for those who can afford to pay; while the other offers very limited services ranging from a few hours of home care per week, to often dreary, poorly staffed, nursing homes funded by Medicaid.
Meanwhile, if you are not financially prepared for a long-term care need, your care options may be limited. Perhaps family members can help? Certainly family will want to help, but many family members today are either not geographically close enough to participate or are not in an economic position to assist financially. So, what do you do? Another option may be Medicaid.
Informed Eldercare Solutions provides information and services that can help elders and their family members to understand the costs and payment options to meet the potentially catastrophic costs of long-term care.
Eldercare In An Age of Scarcity:Who Will Care? Who Will Pay?
America is rapidly moving to a two-tiered system of long-term care services. One provides a range of high quality services for those who can afford to pay; while the other offers very limited services and often poor quality care. This is, perhaps, the major domestic issue facing Americans today and will loom larger as the impact of caring for a rapidly aging population becomes more urgent. Here are some excerpts from the more than 100 posts that focus exclusively on this issue at http://elderplanner.blogspot.com -- new updates posted weekly.
10 Partisan Myths About America's Ability to Support an Aging Society
Our two parties have organized themselves around two lopsided and mutually exclusive world views: Democrats believe every American is "entitled" to government largesse, while Republicans see only the ball and chain of punitive taxation. Each of these views has a set of self-justifying "myths." But their consequences go well beyond making our political process seem foolish. While federal deficit projections soar to dangerous heights, threatening our kids with unconscionable tax hikes, these myths have polarized the two parties and ruled out the sort of bipartisan consensus Americans need to avert fiscal catastrophe.
Medicaid Gets Tough: Prepare to pay for your own long-term care.
Until recently, families might have been able to retain a significant amount of money and still declare "poverty eligibility by transferring assets to special trusts or to relatives and using the remainder to pay the nursing-home bills long enough to satisfy the penalty period for such transfers.
But under the new law known as the "Deficit Reduction Act of 2005,(signed into law in February 2006) that strategy to qualify for government-paid nursing-home care, is now history. Elder-law attorneys, many of whom have prospered by showing middle-class families how to tap medicaid without depleting all their assets, say they feel for people on the wrong side of the deadline. "It seems so unfair that by virtue of just a few weeks, this family will probably not be able to retain any money" from the house, says Felicia Pasculli, a lawyer from Bay Shore, N.Y., who is representing Zatlin and his two daughters, Barbara Leun and Kathleen McGrath.
"My father wanted his house to be a legacy for us," said one daughter. "Now that's not going to happen."
Elder care is a costly struggle for employees and employers alike.
A MetLife study found that people who take on a caregiver role give up more than $650,000 in lifetime earning potential. And on the employer side, the same study estimated that American businesses see a $33 billion productivity loss each year because of employees' caregiving obligations. The numbers suggest there's clearly a business case for introducing benefits and support programs.
First step, talk to your boss. Fortunately or unfortunately, there's not the same stigma with elder care as often exists with child care. When it comes to kids, many managers are quick to assume you can just hire a babysitter or put your kids in day care. They're not as understanding about those challenges. But elder care is different. The solutions aren't as clear-cut, and the problems are often much more complicated.
Health Care Work Force is too Small and Woefully Inadequate to Meet their Needs, Warns a Recent Institute of Medicine Report
In an article titled "Home health aide shortage looming as boomers age" Jim DeBrosse of the Dayton Daily News writes that a looming shortage of home health aides may soon deprive many elders of the option of remaining at home, instead of being forced to enter a nursing home for a long period of time. What? A labor shortage in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great depression? How Can That be?
DeBrosse reports that "Ohio's severely disabled population is expected to double from 175,000 to 350,000 by 2035, according to the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University. As the nation's 78 million baby boomers reach retirement age in 2011, "They will face a health care work force that is too small and woefully inadequate to meet their needs," warns a recent report by the Institute of Medicine."
The good news for job seekers: Home health and personal services are expected to be the second fastest growing job category in Ohio in the next 10 years.
The bad news: It doesn't pay well.
The Institute of Medicine has called for a retooling of the elder care work force, with higher pay, better training and more say in how care is delivered.
ph: 1-800-375-0595
info
