I marvel at our health care system from moment to moment. We can diagnosis dementia and Deng Fever with equal ease and accuracy. At the same time the partitioned and fractured system of delivery channels and professionals almost guarantees a suffocating level of complexity and confusion. It really doesn't have to be and in this article I'm going to show you how to simplify your care giving tasks. The first thing to remember is that you are in charge and control of what happens and not the system. The system responds to what you ask it to do in the way that you ask it and the form that you ask it. Here's my step by step process for simplifying care giving:
1. Legal Documents- Make sure that you have the authority through a General Power of Attorney and Health Care Directives to take care of your parents the way they want. If they haven 't executed these documents, get them on it right now. If they have, know where they are and what they allow you to do. If they won't create the documents or tell you where they are then welcome to a disaster in the making.
2. Support Personnel: Know who your parent's physician is or get them one. Research the at home care giving services in your area (www.theseniorschoice.com) or (www.homeinstead.com ) or others. Find a medical equipment supplier in your neighborhood or on line (www.homecaredelivered.com). You will need medicine, supplies, care givers, physicians, yard care folks, maids, and bill payers.
3. Upgrade the technology: Use systems like eMoneyAdvisor (www.emoneyadvisor.com) through your financial advisor. If you don't have a financial advisor, then get one. Monitoring systems like ADT's Quiet Care, SimplyHome (www.simplyhome.com) or our new service in September, The Parent Care Connection, which will allow you from one technology platform to video conference, send video e-mail, video IM, as well as monitor care giving services, the home envrironment and alert 911 on a subscription basis. Technology is the key to your parents staying at home and you staying in touch. Everything is digitial going forward including parent care.
4.Know Where the Money Is: Nothing starts unless it's accompanied by money in the health care system. You have to know where the money is, how to get it, and the smartest ways to use it. If you don't know how to make those decisions, work with a financial or investment advisor or one of our Parent Care Specialist professionals who have the licenses and training to do that.
5. Find out Who's Going to Help: If you're an only child the answer is easy....no one. If you have some siblings directly ask them what they're willing to do, when they're willing to do it, and when they're willing to do it in the care of your parents. If you don't get an answer or get the 'sibling shuffle", roll past and it and adopt the only child syndrome above. You can be mad at them later but right now you have to take care of mom and dad. See my download "Twenty Eight Reasons Why You Can't Take Care of Your Parents and Twenty Eight Reasons Why You Can".
6. Put together a Team: Our Parent Care Specialist training teaches our folks how to assemble a team of professionals around them like attorneys, geriatric case managers, investment managers, insurance, tax and accounting, care companion services, etc. to manage the care giving process and get the best help possible. You're going to need a team because of the complexities of HIPAA and Privacy.
7. Understand that you can do this: Care giving for parents is like having a new born baby but in reverse. As a baby grows older it gets more and more independent. As a parent grows older, they get more and more dependent as a rule. Just love your parents like they loved you and you'll be fine. Infancy and old age don't last forever and when you look back you'll realize that it went faster than you ever imagined and didn't inconvenience you as much as you thought.
It's not impossible, this care giving thing. Just demanding, challenging, and exciting. Things you're already used to.
