Choosing a Senior Care Provider

Senior Care of Sacramento CEO Therese Johnson being is interviewed by Jim Chong on Money 105.5 FM’s Senior Moments show. She explains essential tips on how to find the best in-home healthcare planner and provider for your aging loved one. The provider must be a “one stop shop”, offering a diverse set of healthcare service delivery options, to be provided by a compassionate worker whose caregiving style is matched, by the case worker, with the personality of your love one. The provider must communicate frequently with the family by phone or on a webpage or through a mobile app. The in-home care case manager must be someone with the type of experience that can be dialed into your family’s particular needs, creating a professional long-term caregiving plan, narrowing down options to the ones that will save time and money, ethically ensuring that your family’s budget goes directly to cost effective care solutions, so that funds will last for the duration the long-term plan.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Jim: We are going to be hearing again from Therese Johnson of Senior Care of Sacramento who hosts this section of the show, she always provides such wonderful tips. And we want to let you know today she’s gonna be talking about: how to find the best home healthcare for your loved one. And we’re actually gonna be at the Senior Awareness Day in San Joaquin County. Thousands of people are gonna be there. She’s also gonna be coming down, joining us there. And the whole theme is Hollywood. And where gonna have a lot of fun connecting with thousands of seniors out there, as well, in the San Joaquin Valley area and Micke Grove Park. But, right now, I’d like to go ahead and present Therese Johnson. Therese how are you?

TJ: Hi Jim! Thank you. I’m doing good.

Jim: Great! Well on this section, this is something actually ironically enough, I just had an appointment with my dad over at the hospital that he goes to, and it was very interesting, because we are actually looking into this very thing as we speak. So, I am all ears here, so I wanna turn over to you Therese Johnson of Senior Care of Sacramento.

TJ: Ok. Great Jim, yeah! Thank you. And I got some really good tips for you and everybody else out there today, because I know that caring for a love one, no matter how much compassion and love you have for your family member or relative, that you’re caring for, it can feel like a full time job. And, with our current healthcare system, you’re just not able to provide families everything they need and require. Families to shoulder more responsibility, to finding, managing and paying for home healthcare.

And, as well, our current care and social service sector has many challenges and changes that necessitate the need for better coordinated care teams, improved communication tools. And now we’re also having a lot of innovated technology to support better healthcare outcomes as well. So, here are some tips designed to help families and seniors evaluate the best home healthcare options to meet their needs. And you wanna start by asking if the home healthcare provider you’re interested in offers these following services. So, number one is: “Are they offering comprehensive care options, which means seniors often have a diverse set of healthcare and social service needs, so you need to look for care provider that offers a comprehensive range of caring professionals, delivering the full spectrum of services and advocacy resources, like a Senior Care of Sacramento. In a one-stop shop, so to speak, type of service. And that is what we do at Senior Care of Sacramento, we help you find this kind of care provider.

The second thing is the choice of caring professionals. So each person care is unique and requires personalized and a custom approach to the care, so it’s important that your care provider offers you direct opportunity to interview, select and hire the best kinds of professionals that need your current needs. And they shouldn’t just send out one care provider and say that. You should have opportunity to interview several so that you can match the personalities with your love one and that kind of thing. And, then the next thing is having some control over the care. You wanna make sure that the service delivery options and outcomes are involving the family and senior in their own care. So, it’s proven that when family and seniors are involved in their own care, the delivery of healthcare outcomes is much better.

We wanna make sure that keep you involved and fully communicating with you and participating. And that’s what leads me to our next tip: The communication tool. So, I mean, because caring is often a team effort, and so effective communication between seniors, friends and family, as well as professional care teams – just critical for delivering quality care outcomes. So you wanna make sure that you feel comfortable with the in-home service that you’re using. It’s communication! Communication! Communication is key. So, and if you’re not comfortable with communicating with then you wanna work with company that you are comfortable with. And, so, be sure that you feel that you can speak your mind and say your peace when you’re working with the care provider. And, then next is communication tools.

Now a lot of software tools out there also available now, that in-home care services are using to make it more, to help with communications. So, that’s something to consider also. And they can very be helpful and especially when you have a different shift coming on, it helps people to stay in touch. If somebody’s running late, they can make note, or if you’re at work and you wanna communicate with the caregivers, these are some great tools that are available now online, as well, especially for working professionals, that are trying to manage their loved one’s care. So, you wanna ask me about that, if they’re using those kind of tools. The next thing is coordinated care. And, that’s one thing that I do with Senior Care of Sacramento – we’re in a very effective senior advocate coordinating care plans, care team and care outcomes so we offer effective tools and resources to support you at the planning, scheduling, budgeting, payment in the delivery of care for your loved one.

So we can do this part of it for you and we can help you with finding the right in-home healthcare command to use an agency. Because, then you’re not become an employer and that somebody doesn’t show-up then told in the bagging maybe you have to take off works so and there all their license inbounded and the employees are finger printed so I always recommend that you use an agency if it all possible.

Jim: Therese, now I know this is what you’re organization really specialize in Senior Care of Sacramento placement and also the invaluable information you’ve given week after week to help seniors and “pe” really I would believe the audiences more than just a senior obviously the people that are taking care of the seniors. And, so I just wanted to ask you in terms of looking for homecare just specifically you’re giving some great! Great! Tools and advice.

Is there anyone, I know this can be little complicated as well a is there any other resources you can think of that they could just go too, of course they can just contact you as well maybe that’s the way to go, what are your thoughts about that?

TJ: I think, the best way to go is to contact referred service like our company or one that’s in your area. And work with Geriatric case manager or somebody with that type of experience, that can dialed in your particular need and narrow down and save you a lot of time and money. And, really it’s the best way to go like the one-stop shop, so the speak resource that liked I’m saying like, like we do. Because, then you can get all your current needs that in one spot you have one person that is cradling basically a long term care plan for you, and that that’s kind of the last two tips. One is caused by care; you wanna insure that is much of your family’s budget goes directly to the cause of care. And that, their, funds will last for the duration of their current need, so that’s really important factor and you need to take that in the consideration and that’s what a long term care plan will do also.

Jim: You know we’re running out time here. Is there any final words you’d like to let the listening audience know. And of course we would love for you to give your contact information as well.

TJ: Yes. The final thing is you wanna make sure that they have a very caring approach. Was secret providers to a dedicated to empowering seniors and families to be the best they can be for themselves and their love one. Independence is key for seniors. You wanna keep have caregivers that their gonna keep them as independent as possible, not make them dependent on them. So, this is gonna make your life a lot easier. So, basically, we’re call Senior Care of Sacramento for your one-stop shop resources for all your current need. We only refer to in home care agencies that are license and use train caregivers and, in addition, we help you find resource that to pay for those in home out services.

Jim: Great. Thank you so much Therese Johnson of Senior Care of Sacramento.