Step 1: Conduct Assessment

Interview questions cover a range of issues relevant to your elder's health and living situation, including everyday activities, nutritional status, safety, memory, depression, finances, insurance, and more.

Interviews between a Geriatric Care Manager and the senior can be done with or without family members but if you have concerns that you think the Care Manager should be aware of like memory problems, be sure to talk to the caregiver separately. It is important that the Care Manager has all the information that is necessary to do the best job possible.

Step 2: Make a Care Plan

A Care Plan includes the results of the assessment, recommendations, and referrals for local care options. The Geriatric Care Manager will go into great depth in explaining some of the details of the plan, what led to the recommendations, what you can expect, and prioritize the needs list.

Some things may be immediate and mandatory like monitoring medications that are not being taken properly. Other things like personal hygiene issues and diet are important to health and well-being and therefore need to be monitored closely.

A Care Plan will also include regular reassessments. As we age, so do our capabilities. Capabilities and functions need to be monitored as time goes on with adjustments made for those changes.

Step 3: Arrange Services

The Care Manager will arrange for the services through other parties.

A Care Manager finds out what you can do yourself, what can be done by other family members, matches this to the priority lists and economic abilities, and then helps to arrange for and monitor services.

Care Managers are uniquely connected in the community. In many cases a Care Manager can save you more than her own fees by making the proper connections and knowing who a she is hiring. Care Managers know which programs work, know many of the care services and their reputations.

Even if you are local to your parent, a Care Manager can take a load of organization off from your shoulders. They coordinate between service providers and are in many ways, like a General Contractor. Service personnel and companies are responsible for responding to them, not you.

In many cases, the service personnel are even more responsive and informed with a Geriatric Care Manager than they would be with you. A Care Manager knows what is to be done, helps communicate between service companies and individuals, and often catches issues before they become problems.

If you are remote from your parent, they are even more beneficial to you. Getting in touch with local service companies and monitoring them is difficult if not impossible from 1000 miles away.

Step 4: Monitor needs

The first meeting establishes a baseline and follow up assessments will be compared to that initial assessment to determine what if anything needs to change.

A Care Manager is not in the home on a daily basis except under severe circumstances. Usually the Care Manager will see the elder weekly or semi weekly, or as needed and keep in contact with the elder in the interim by phone.

Step 5: Communicate

Above all else, a Care Manager stays in contact with you and your elder. Not only does she help you understand what is going on, doing so helps to keep her updated on anything that you see as an issue. By staying in touch, you also let her know that you are interested and are paying attention to what they do.

Geriatric Care Managers are at their best when they work in partnership with you, your senior parent, and the service providers