The vision for this blog is to create a community of harmonious professionals across the care continuum who encourage each other in exploring digital media as a way to support businesses and families dealing with elder care.
Written on March 25th, 2010 by tasha
The Remington Report just hosted a great webinar yesterday on integrating disease management across the continuum. As many of you may know, CMS is working hard to reduce unnecessary expenditures, create continuity across providers/settings, engage patients in self-care, and improve outcomes. Every one is a worthy goal!
This webinar was a showcase of several programs designed to meet these goals while also addressing new OASIS-C regs for home health.
Even if you are a hospice, geriatric care manager, or private duty care provider, these changes will affect you—in a positive way! Read the rest of this entry »
Written on March 18th, 2010 by tasha
Search engine optimization for hospice and other elder care professionals.
How can you increase your chances of “being found” without having to pay for a Google ad?
This is one of three topics I’ll be covering in a Webinar sponsored by NHPCO, March 23 from 11:00 – 12:30 Pacific.
Marketing Hospice in the Digital Age. In this webinar we’ll be talking about the three top vehicles for making better use of the Internet:
I don’t get paid to do this. I do it because I love to teach and see it simply as part of my mission to help elder care professionals connect with the families that need their services. (I can’t fix the Middle East or global warming, but I can do my part to improve accessibility by helping hospices and other providers more effectively leverage the Internet!)
You don’t have to be an NHPCO member to sign up. And even though the focus will be on hospice, if you are targeting Boomer daughters and sons, or if you want to network with professionals using online resources, this workshop will definitely be relevant.
To give you a sense of the kinds of things we’ll be talking about at the Webinar, here’s a preview post about search engine optimization and how you can, very simply, improve your rankings: Read the rest of this entry »
Written on March 10th, 2010 by tasha
Carve a niche for yourself and help employed family caregivers in the process.
In our last post, we talked about employed family caregivers and how much they juggle between work and home and elder care responsibilities. The other side of that coin is the employers.
From the employers’ point of view, family caregiving is costly. This gives you some opportunities, however, to network with HR professionals and Employee Assistance Programs in your area. If you establish yourself as the expert in family caregiving, and offer to lead brown bags and talk about local support programs, you will be garnering a great referral source and a wonderful way to get your name out in the community.
Oddly enough, many HR departments don’t even know how much elder care impacts their employees. As we reported in our last post, many employees do not tell HR because they are worried it will jeopardize their job. Since approximately 19% of American adults report caring for an older relative, employers can safely estimate that 15-25% of their workforce is comprised of employed family caregivers. The higher the proportion of middle-aged workers, the higher the number of family caregivers.
Here are some statistics that can help you make the case to HR that they need to look at elder care issues now. As much as they look at childcare, elder care is a very real factor in their middle-aged employees’ lives, and it’s costing the company money to ignore it.
A 2006 employer study by MetLife and the National Alliance for Caregiving revealed that family caregiving costs the nation’s employers more than $33 billion annually in productivity losses. These run the gamut from replacement costs for employees who must leave, to costs relating to workday interruptions, absenteeism and crisis care. Productivity losses average $2100 per caregiving employee!
MetLife and the National Alliance for Caregiving just last week came out with a case study of a large manufacturing company with 17,000+ employees. They looked at the health of family caregivers and concomitant health costs to the employer.
Because family caregivers are often stressed, they tend to ignore their own health needs. In this case study, for instance, among the female blue collar employees, only 57% of those who were family caregivers got a yearly mammogram as compared to 90% of those who were not caregivers. Like caregivers nationwide, the family caregivers in this company (both male and female; white collar and blue collar) had a higher incidence of depression, and a greater tendency to engage in poor health habits (smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, lack of sleep.) Not surprisingly, the family caregivers also showed markedly higher rates of hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, and several other chronic conditions.
As a result, this one case study estimated that family caregivers cost the employer 8% more in additional health costs when compared with their non-caregiving peers.
Smart worksites, therefore, are now paying attention and implementing programs to support their caregiving employees so that absenteeism, interrupted workdays, new hire replacement expenses and unnecessary health costs can be avoided or minimized.
If you want to reach out to family caregivers and network more with professionals, contact your local employment department. Very likely there is a monthly or quarterly networking meeting of human resource professionals in the area. From large employers to employee assistance providers, these professionals are hungry for information about caregiver educational and support programs in the area. This is your opportunity to shine!
Increasingly, health providers are learning that the best way to reach their audience is in naturally occurring communities. Human resource professionals are feeling the pressure to meet the needs of employees caring for elders. This is your chance to strengthen your community and build a niche for yourself, creating name recognition and brand loyalty among working-age caregivers and the professionals who support them.
Any tips you can share about networking with employers?
Written on March 3rd, 2010 by tasha
Helping families when caregivers also work outside the home.
According to the recent 2009 National Alliance for Caregiving report, nearly three-quarters (74%) of family caregivers have been employed while helping an older adult friend or relative.
The bulk of family caregivers are of working age:
The vast majority of family caregivers (89%) provide care for a relative, most commonly for their mother (36%). One fifth (20%) say their care receiver lives with them, and 51% say they live within 20 minutes of their care receiver. More than one out of seven (16%) are distance caregivers, meaning their care receiver lives an hour or more away.
With family caregivers spending an average of 19 hours per week giving care, those who are employed are particularly pinched. Growing numbers of employers are becoming aware of the pressures eldercare places on their employees. Employed family caregivers frequently have to make accommodations at work:
From the employees’ point of view, in a cruel twist of fate, this often means losing not only current income, but especially in the light of leaving the work world, they lose valuable earning of retirement benefits they will need themselves when they are older and potentially in need of care.
Those most likely to make workplace accommodations for elder care include:
Although the groups listed above appear to experience greater competition between their work and caregiving responsibilities, those in the “low risk” groups are hardly small in number (e.g., 67% vs. 47%; 78% vs. 56%). Research has shown that family caregivers are often hesitant to discuss their elder care challenges at work for fear of it prejudicing their employment. In one study, less than one in four employees reported talking to the HR department about caregiving concerns, making elder care, for many years, an invisible stressor.
In subsequent posts, we’ll talk about the impact on employers, based on a new study just released by MetLife, and what you can do to network with HR professionals to support their caregiving employees.
What have you been doing to support employed family caregivers?
