Q: If I live in the Midwest and my mother lives in New York, how can I get care for her?
A Professional Geriatric Care Manager can build a relationship of trust with your father, assist him with appointments, and matching him with one of our personal assistants (caregivers) to support him in ways that you would, if you lived closer. I as Care Manager will keep in touch with you and based on your mom’s values, traditions and needs, work to make sure your mom‘s life stays the way she wants it.

Q: Mother broke her hip and is in the hospital. The daughter gets a call from the hospital that they are discharging the patient the next morning. She is panicked because she works full-time, lives in another town and hasn't been able to make any plans because neither the hospital nor her mother's doctor could tell her when she would be discharged.
The daughter can call the hospital and tell them that she cannot be discharged until care plans are in place, A hospital has an ethics standard and liability code to unhold and cannot discharge her since her life could be in danger until thorough care plans are in place. The daughter would be wise to immediately call a Geriatric Care Manager who could start working with the discharge planners and social workers at the hospital and communicate with the daughter about the care options.

Q: If my aunt is too sick to live at home, or cannot afford to pay for the amount of care and services she needs, can you help me get her certified for Medicaid, and/or placed in a nursing home?
Do you keep the family informed of what is happening with our parents?
There are various routes by which she can get certified for Medicaid. The GCM can certainly get her and her family started toward applying for Medicaid and for a nursing home. However, if neither the family nor the aunt have any financial resources, most, if not all, nursing homes want the potential resident to have Medicaid already, or at least be deemed as qualified and Medicaid pending. The family can call the Medicaid offices directly and a homecare worker can come to her aunt's home to take information to start the process, but the family must get the list of all required material that the homecare worker will need in order to complete the application.

Q: If my relative finally needs assisted living or a nursing home, will the GCM continue to work with her/him?
The GCM will help the elder and family members choose whatever level of care is needed, will help with applications and all phases of admission. The GCM can continue to work with the elder, if desired, but one caveat, if Medicare has been paying for the GCM, Medicare will no longer pay once the elder is in a facility. It then becomes the family responsibility financially.

Q: Can the GCM help obtain concrete services, such as transfering to Medicaid, obtaining legal services (Trusts, will, conservatorships), physical therapy, speech therapy, geriatric psychiatry, financial help, food stamps, heat bills reduction, etc.
Each GCM has his/her range of expertise and coverage. However, any services that are needed, that the GCM does not directly supply can be found and subcontracted by the GCM.

Q: My mother keeps calling me with various aches and pains -- her shoulder, her hip, she can't breathe, etc...-- how do I know if they're real or whether they're a sign of something else?
They certainly can be real. At various times the older body can suffer different aches and pains, especially if the person is not moving much or doing any exercise. However, they can also be the physical manifestation of depression, sadness (yes they are different), lonliness,need to be heard/recognized. They cab also be a mixture of both, or even referred pain from something else going on in the body. What your response might be also depends upon whether you are within easy visiting distance or whether you are trying to guage what is going on from her phone calls. I would suggest you getting the help in thd form of a thorough evaluation by a geriatric psychologist/psychotherapist and a geriatric physician.

Q: A man is concerned about his father who lives out of state. The father is living in an assisted living facility, appears quite depressed and is now starting to show some paranoid ideations, and the assisted living facility is making noises about the father no longer being able to live there, because he needs too much care.. There are no relatives close to where the father is living and the son is worried that he should move his father in with him. However the son is nervous and feeling guilty about that option because he and his father never got along very well.
He should secure the advice of a Geriatric Care Manager who could explore the quality of the father's mental and physical condition, his living arrangements, the complaints of the facility, what else might be avilable, what might be other arrangements where the son and father could be closer to each other yet not be living together. This arrangement might assuage the son's guilt but not make living difficult for both of them.

Q: My father called me last night and was slurring his words like he had had too much to drink. What do I say? Should I be worried?
There are several immediate facts that need to be known before answering the question directly: is he living alone, does he have a caretaker, does he drink, does he have a history of drinking too much, does he still drive, where does he live-could he get hurt? He could be over medicated. It would also be a good idea to know what meds he is on, is he able to measure out his meds himself or does he have someone who assists him, how good is his memory -- does he remember to take his meds, could he have taken a double dose, thinking he hadn't taken them yet. Also check the prescriptions/dosage and talk to his doctor asking if the meds and the doses are accurate, or if possibly any of the prescriptions can be cut down or cut out.

Q: An older woman has a history of dementia and alcoholism and is addicted to buying items from a home shopping channel.
She spends hundreds of dollars of items each week. She does have a live-in attendant who is with her every day. The older woman's sister is frightened, can't stop her, and is worried that she will spend all her money and won't have enough for her care.
The sister should secure the advice of a Geriatric Care Manager who can determine whether the attendant can play a role in determining what the woman buys, assess what seems to trigger the shopping sprees, can she be diverted, is she too sick to work out ways to control her own urges, should a conservatorship or guardianship be considered.