Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning everyone, Welcome to Life Happens Radio. I'm your
host Lupiro for this morning from Pierre O'Connor and Straussen.
We have a great show for you today and it's
going to focus on something that is important to all
of us at some point in our lives. Some of
you may be going through this now. And I think
it was Matilda Cuomo, Mario's wife who wrote to several
books and was quoted as saying, you either are a caregiver,
(00:25):
you will be a caregiver, or you've been a caregiver,
and being a caregiver, a lot of people don't even
realize that they are. You're taking care of needs of
another human being. In many cases, you start that journey
as a parent and you're the caregiver for your children,
but then the roles reverse and now as your parents' age,
(00:47):
your children grow, you are aging through your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties,
and now you become the caregiver for your parents, and
that role reversal is shock to some. And last week
we had a caller and I haven't done this before,
but we had a caller whose call was so pertinent
(01:08):
and so on point. For today's show that I'm going
to repeat it, and James, if you're out there, thank
you for the call last week, and I'm going to
play it right now. And good morning, James, Welcome to
Life Happens.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Hey, good morning. I would recommend you guys are a
law firm that specializes in some of this preparation for
getting older and maybe guiding some of these I just
listened to the caller you were talking to, guiding them
through some of the challenges they're about to face with
(01:44):
their mother that's now had a broken hip. There's an
entire opportunity out there in this world for a company
to embrace the challenges of this part of life. Literally,
we just went through this over five years in my
family with my mom and she recently passed, you know,
(02:05):
lover to pieces and we dealt with it right straight
through COVID. She broke her hip, just like this lady
that you just were talking about. She went into a
rehab facility that was during COVID. She was in rehab
for sixteen months. I couldn't see her. I couldn't none
(02:25):
of our siblings could go see her or visit her.
We ended up pulling her out, bringing her home She's
got a seventeen room Victorian house, and not one part
of that house was prepared to have her living there
as a person with severe disability. So we had to
go through the construction phases of remodeling the home, and
(02:46):
then we had to get caregivers. I don't care how
much money you have. You can have all the money
in the world, but to get real, good quality caregivers
that can help you twenty four to seven, it's almost impossible.
So the challenges involved in this are absolutely off the charts.
There are programs out there that the state and federal
(03:09):
will help you with, but the hoops that you got
to go through in the waiting periods you got to
go through, you're at the mercy of the system. I'm
telling you, it is the most unreal thing you'll ever
go through. You could be a young couple gonna have
a baby, okay, and you've been senting you you've had
no children for the first three years of your marriage,
(03:29):
and now you've got a serious, a serious, a serious
change of time in your lives as having your first
child when your parents get old and they are no
longer able to be on their own. It's just like
having kids coming into the family even worse though, because
the challenges that are involved in that, all of the
(03:49):
healthcare visits and everything that they can be having. And
then they go through phases because they've been very independent
all their lives, they go through phases of depression and
all kinds as issues of their own that are overwhelming.
They I'm not saying they're looking to commit suicide, but
they can be very difficult to deal with. They don't
want to eat, they don't want to eat certain foods,
(04:11):
they don't want to go to the bathroom when they
need to. I could go on and on and on
of five years of living with this, and I'm telling you,
somebody needs to start a company that can understand every
aspect of this. I'm talking about lining up contractors to
be able to do work. I'm talking about every phase
(04:33):
of taking care of elderly at home because ultimately that's
where it needs to be is in your house. That's
where they're the most happy, is when they're in their
own space.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And that is our lead in for today's show. And James,
thank you for that call. It was not a show
about a company to solve those problems, but we just
happened to have had the guests that I have in
studio today lined up already when James called, so I
had to play that just to lead into today's conversation
about care, health care, long term care. How do you
(05:07):
navigate a healthcare system that is so badly fractured and
broken that no one, doctors, hospitals can't make sense of it,
let alone the patience being pushed through this system and
breaking a hip and going to the emergency room should
not be a death sentence, but in today's healthcare system
(05:27):
it can be unless you have the right help. So
I am very thrilled today to have live with me
in studio the representatives of ever Home Care Advisors and
Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, who is the vice president of client Services,
and Diane has been on the show before. We have
with us also Nina Cressanda and Sherry Catapano, who are
(05:48):
people at ever Home that work day to day with
families in helping to solve these problems. And I'm going
to go left to right, So Nina, I want to
start with you because the healthcare system is something that
I see and I have been witnessing for my whole career,
and that's forty years of practicing law and elder law
and special needs and it is just disintegrating before our eyes.
(06:09):
You worked in the healthcare system. How has that background,
what was that background? How has that helped you today
working with our families. Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Absolutely so. I've been an occupational therapist. I've been treating
since twenty seventeen. I first started working at the Center
for Disability Services with individuals and adults with disabilities. From there,
I transitioned to traveling therapy so I could become more independent.
I managed two skilled nursing facilities in different areas in
South Carolina. I moved to Syracuse after that, and I
(06:39):
worked at Upstate in their acute care. I did criminal
functional assessments as well as final assessments home assessments to
get them back to their highest level of independence. From there,
I worked at an assisted living and independent living facility.
I was the sole OT for three hundred residents. I
would go to their homes, complete home evaluation and make
(07:00):
sure that their goals were the goals that we were
working on together. I've also worked through some hospital systems,
admitting clients to different rehab facilities and determining if they
are effective or if the facility is the appropriate match
for the client. So my core focus as an OT
(07:21):
has always been and continues to be meeting clients where
they are, prioritizing their needs, their goals to preserve their
independence and enhance their overall quality of life.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
You're no longer inside the healthcare system. You're not working
for hospital systems or doctors or healthcare systems.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Now you're outside the healthcare system, And just describe that transition,
what you do today and how that background helps you.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
So a lot of times when I was in OT,
I would run into barriers, like I couldn't get doctors
on the phone, I couldn't do lots of things because
I just didn't have the time. My sole focus now
is working on those goals, is getting everything, spending my
time making sure that I'm solving my client's problems. And
(08:08):
I can do that now outside of the system by
being able to have access to tons of resources, networking
and other opportunities that we can bring to our clients
to enhance their lives.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And I think knowing what's going on inside the system
absolutely helps the people and the patients and their families
that are coming into the system cold that don't have
that knowledge. So I know that we were sharing stories,
and you have a recent success story. Just tell our
listeners about that and how you can make a difference.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Sure, this doesn't often happen.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I would like to preface that, but I was hired
on Monday this week.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
That's recent.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
That's pretty recent.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
The client needs twenty four to seven care and in
order to get home, he was going to be discharged wednesday.
So we need to define that super super fast. And
I called every agency in their county. Wasn't getting a
lot of luck. Then I got some luck, and on Tuesday,
I got the call and we set up twenty four
(09:13):
to seven care for that gentleman to start Wednesday night.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
And that is, as you said, unusual.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
It doesn't normally happen to be able to.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Find that unicorns. Home Health Aids have become unicorns trying
to find the right care, the right home healthcare and
put a program together. And I'll talk about my experiences
because I've been doing it as a caregiver with my mom,
with my uncle, with my dad. And we're gonna go
over to Sherry Cherry Catapano, who comes at it from
a little different angle, but with a background similar in
(09:41):
healthcare and now.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Hi, good morning. I'm Cherry Catapano. As Lou said, I'm
a licensed Master social worker and a certified case manager,
and I worked over thirty years in the healthcare system
at a not for profit local healthcare organismation and I
have seen for years how our system tried to be innovative,
(10:06):
to try to help a lot of the fragmentation and
to try to help a lot of our members. However,
since retiring from that system and being on the outside,
I have seen how the system has gotten even more fragmented,
more confused to navigate through and the follow through for
(10:28):
patients at a time when they really need the care
and their caregivers are really beside themselves because there's no
manual that comes with any of this. There's nothing that
a caregiver can say, oh, let me do ABC that
will work. It'll solve my mom's problems. That's not how
it works for the caregiver and the family. You have
(10:50):
to figure out what do they want, what do they need,
and what can they do and then the next step
is to know the network, to know the agencies, to
know the infrastructure to know how to access these programs,
and that was something that I had learned and had
quite a good database of those resources to kind of
(11:12):
put the two together. However, in saying that that doesn't
mean that agency worked last week will work this week.
It still really takes somebody coordinating that care that's on
the outside can listen to everyone. And I'm so thrilled
to be working for a company that allows me to
(11:33):
do that, to really help people one person at a time, literally,
and it's great and I really look forward to a
lot of success stories that I can share.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Like Nina, just dad, So you're newer to ever Home
Care Advisors, but the team is growing, and I want
to turn over now to Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, who has
been working with Everhome for a time now, who was
also an active caregiver and has been for her parents
and as part of a team that I'm kind of
part of as well, developing new resources. The whole system.
(12:07):
The healthcare system has to be innovated in ways that
are hard because so many stakeholders have financial interests and
what you're trying to do is reduce cost, which in
some cases reduces profit. So how do we get to
patient back in the middle of all this and Diane
talk about your experiences with Everhome as a caregiver and
(12:28):
the exciting things that ever Home is working on.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
Sure, thanks and good morning everyone. I'm happy to be here,
and my experience is as a physical therapist for many
years in the healthcare system, working in it in various
levels and layers. But when I came to Everhome, I
was working prior to that in the home care arena,
but my mom was ill and I was her primary caregiver.
(12:56):
My parents were living in their own home. My dad
is still very vibrant and kicking butt at ninety one,
but my mom unfortunately passed. But whatever Home and its
sister company, Viva Links allowed me to do was be
part of the development of something very exciting to help
(13:17):
caregivers connect with keep connection with their loved ones in
their home. At the same time, I was able to
take advantage of those opportunities in my own situation, so
I could help evaluate the system and see how it
could develop going forward. So I was able to keep
(13:38):
contact with my mom by sensors in the home, by
video chats, by the technology that Viva Links was able
to provide and working with ever Home hand in hand
to advance goals, to see what we needed as a family,
to see what my mom needed as an individual, to
see what my dad needed as a caregiver in the home,
(13:59):
and then to see what resources are available out there,
and using the strength of ever Home to access those resources,
using the strength of Evil Lengths to tie it all together,
to put that as we like to say, the human
touch meets technology or tech enabled care coordination. So it's
been very exciting to be part of this, and I
(14:20):
think it's the future.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
It's the present, but it's the future.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
So you had a dad in the home who was
a caregiver for a mom in the home with Alzheimer's,
and you were the daughter who was trying to coordinate
it all while working an hour away and not having
to run down there every five minutes when there was
a situation. Just talk a little bit about how it
helped your dad as the caregiver.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Sure, So.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
Alzheimer's is a path that it's horrible, a horrible path.
We all know that, and it's different for every single person.
And my mom was physically able to be up and about,
but needed those cots of assists, and my dad would
really need to be there all the time, just anticipating
what her needs were. With the cameras and the sensors
(15:10):
we put in the home, my dad was able to
start his day if my mom was not ready to
start her day, which was typically what happened, and he
would be able to start his day and then get
a text message that would say my mom was out
of bed, or he'd get some kind of alert that
my mom was up and about. He could stop what
(15:33):
he was doing prior to that. He would just wait,
and it gave him some freedom there. It also allowed
him to know if my mom was out of bed
in the.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Middle of the night.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
We know when certain doors open, if my mom let
someone in the front door and he was out in
the garden and the front door opened. So there's a
huge sense of safety, but there's also very practical information
and that's what as I now work for this company,
I say it helps us make decisions based on information
(16:05):
in real time in the home, whether you're in the
home or not.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
So as a lawyer, we are problem solvers. Clients come
to us because something's wrong or they want to plan
to prevent things from happening and going wrong, and as
problem solvers, we can only do so much. We can
do legal planning, we can do financial planning, but we
can't do the care planning that's necessary for our clients.
(16:29):
So we have to take a short break. When we
come back, we're going to talk about ever home care Advisors,
Viva Links, going to open up the phone lines. I
want to thank James again for teeing this up because
this is a problem that is not going to go away.
It is not getting better or easier. And the solutions
that we're bringing you today, folks are innovative and I
(16:50):
would say unique, not just in the Capital region but
in the country. Stay with us. We'll be right back turbatch.
I'm Luke Kiro, your host for this morning, an attorney
from kiero' connor and Strauss in studio with three non attorneys,
three people that were professionals in the healthcare system that
(17:11):
are now working outside the healthcare system for clients who
are in it, who need assistants, who need guidance, who
need to be taken through the maze of healthcare choices,
long term care choices. And we're going to go back
and kind of go through all of this, but I
do want to open up our phone lines. If you
have a call, if you're a caregiver, you have a
caregiving question, or you want to talk to any of
(17:33):
our caregivers here, give us a call at eight hundred
eight two five five nine four nine. It's eight hundred
talk WGY again eight hundred eight two five fifty nine
forty nine And Nina, I'm going to come back to you.
You've had you shared one of your success stories, and
I know that that is an unusual two day turnaround
(17:56):
to get a twenty four to seven care plan. And
I'll share my story and what led me into this
whole area from a caregiving perspective. I was a caregiver
for my mother twenty five years ago and she had
Alzheimer's and I hired hired a gentleman by the name
of Joe Jackson, who at the time was one of
(18:16):
the only geriatric care managers that's what they were called
then in the Capitol Region. And he wasn't even in
the Capitol region. He was in Lenox, Massachusetts, and all
but in New York. There were zero twenty five years ago,
nobody doing the job that you ladies are doing today.
So Joe Jackson put a care plan together for my mom.
He found caregivers, he interviewed them, screened them, did background
checks on them, and whittled it down to four. My
(18:39):
sister and I interviewed the four. We hired two and
they became my mother's caregivers for about three years, four
years where we kept her at home and it was
a relationship where they would take her out to lunch.
You get to bond when you have a consistent care team.
You get to bond with people and the system today,
if you're going to a home health agency, Nina is
(19:00):
isn't exactly that?
Speaker 4 (19:01):
No, it isn't. It's not so.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I mean, when we are considering home health agencies and
finding people, a lot of the concerns that we have
with the financial concern of the hourly rates, you know,
finding the right match for people because the human connection
is so important. Social isolation has been a pandemic, just
like COVID has. The effects of individuals with depression is
(19:28):
only skyrocketed, especially in the older adult population. So getting
caregivers that are the appropriate match with the appropriate level
of skill does take some finding, some research, some real investigation,
and thought and collaboration with the family and the client
and Cherry.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You came from the health insurance world partly and the
health insurance plans, and we've had people here from CDPHP,
We've had people here from other insurance companies. Medicare advantage
plans have tried to innovate and bring new services to
the table. Telemedicine has been brought into a lot of
the health insurance plans, and you have just a complex
(20:12):
array of different medic gap plans, Medicare advantage plans. People
need help just sorting out the insurance options, and that's
something that the state actually has an agency and a
part of the state government, the Office for Aging, that
helps people through that. But nobody knows those resources are there.
(20:33):
So how do we get people to utilize the resources
that are available to them.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Lou You're so correct.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
I would have many conversations and no one would really
know who just called them and where they were from.
Because after a hospitalization, you can be bombarded from your
doctor's office, calling from the home care agency, calling from
the hospital, calling from the health insurance calling, and you
just have a common with them, and you really don't
(21:01):
know their purpose and their goal. And that's what's for
me about ever Homecare Advisors is great. Because I'm calling
from ever Homecare Advisors. You will know who I am
and kind of be able to trust me because the
relationship is key, and then to build on that relationship.
(21:23):
So you are exactly correct in the fact that and
it's a time also too when people don't feel good,
so you really have to take that into consideration. You know,
they're not feeling great, and they're getting calls from four
or five different places asking the exact same questions, and
they don't know where to turn. And that's why ever
(21:46):
Homecare Advisors is just such a wonderful resource to fill
so many gaps.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
My experience I went through nine years ago. I just
had my nine year anniversary open hearts. I've talked about
it on the show. Quintuple bypass surgery and a valve replacement,
a very major surgery. And when I got home, you know,
I was a lawyer at age fifty seven and I'm
ready to get back to work, and the phone just
kept bringing and it was post hospitalization follow up calls.
(22:18):
And they were calling me. Why because they got paid
to call me, Because there's reimbursement when somebody leaves the
hospital and goes home. There's reimbursement for hospital follow up,
and there's this magic thirty day window. If they can
keep you out of the hospital for thirty days, they
get a bonus check. But if you go on day
thirty one, they get paid again for your readmission, So
(22:41):
that thirty days is a cliff and the phone stops
ringing after thirty days. I did have one my primary
and it was CDPHP that kept calling me after that
and did more follow up and actually came to the
house and did a follow up check. But hospitalizations today
can be lethal, and they can be so confusing because,
(23:04):
as you said, trying to find home care while you're
in the hospital. You know, what's your experience with that,
and how do people deal with all of this incoming
information and then all of a sudden you get dropped.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
We'll even tell you I've had an experience where a
client that was not cognitively intact was approached with paperwork
and they asked him to sign it, even though it
was well documented that he was not able to do so.
So when we're in the hospital, we need as a patient,
(23:37):
you need an advocate, you need someone to speak up
for you. You need someone that can dedicate their time, attention,
and resources because phone calls add up. When you're calling
agency after agency, it is frustrating.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
It takes time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
You have to ask a lot of the same questions,
and sometimes they want information you may not know as
a patient or a caregiver.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
We're gonna take a short break for the news. When
we come back, we're gonna dig back into this and
I'll open up the phone lines again. Zach's waiting for
your calls. Eight hundred talk WGY. That's eight hundred eight
two five five nine four nine. Folks, if you haven't
faced this situation, prepare yourself and I'm going to talk
about that on the flip side, because James was exactly right.
(24:23):
You need to be prepared, and hopefully if you listen
to this show, you will be. We'll be right back.
There are places I remember on a cloudy, rainy, prizzly day.
Hopefully you're staying with us for this. What to me
(24:44):
is a show that you shouldn't miss because there are
so many times in your life that you're gonna have responsibilities,
caregiving responsibilities, and we started with that. When you have children,
it's your first job is to be a caregiver for
those children. Make sure you have a plan and as
time goes on, you'll be a caregiver for your parents
(25:05):
if they age and have needs, and at some point
you'll be a caregiver for your spouse, and then you'll
be a caregiver for yourself. If you want to be independent,
you want to live independently. And we have some great
stories of people who have fought their way through this system,
and we can talk about Stanley and a part of
our conversation, but how do you access this quality of care?
(25:29):
And again, if you want to ask questions eight hundred
eight two five five nine, four nine, we're going to
come back to you. Diane, Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, the vice
president of client services at ever Home Care Advisors. How
does ever Home start this process? And what can people
and families do to get information?
Speaker 6 (25:49):
Sure? What you do to start the processes call us,
but you might be referred to us.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
You could.
Speaker 6 (25:55):
We receive referrals from multiple different sources, whether it be
from elder law attorneys, hospital discharge planners, friends in the community.
And once you call us, the very first thing, and
I want to reiterate something that Nina said before is
that we find out what your needs are and.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
What you want.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
It may not be the same thing, but what you
want is very important, and that's what we're going to
work on to advance what your goals are. But we're
going to do that and let you know what's reasonable
to what are reasonable expectations, because we all want.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Pie in the sky. Just out of curiosity, how many
times is it the actual patient calling and how many
times is it the child caregiver calling.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
I'm going to just pull a number out of the
air here, but I would say seventy five percent of
the time it's the child or the caregiver calling. And
but we do have patients that do call, but it's
certainly not the majority. It's usually the caregiver and it's
based on need. And we also we have a client
that very astutely says, if you wait until you are
(27:01):
in a crisis, you've waited too later, if you wait
if it's imminent. So if you're in if your loved
one is in the nursing home and they've been talking
about discharge and now that is tomorrow, that is certainly
not the time to get things lined up. So discharge
begins the day you enter any facility, that discussion.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
And if you don't know that, you need to because
the minute they they put your name on a piece
of paper, they're looking at the discharge plan and.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
They're projecting the discharge plan. And what you really want
to make sure that happens is that they're projecting the
discharge plan based on what you want, but what you're
able to do as well, because everyone doesn't have the
same opportunities.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
So we look at all that.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
From the call perspective and then we will see what
services we provide fit with what you need. It's not
a one size fits all. It's how how much time
we have to do something, what your resource, and what
your payment structure is as well. Sometimes it is how
(28:06):
much you can afford to do, and we'll try to
fit that all in.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
We're going to take a call. We have Beth in Troy.
Good morning, Beth, Welcome to life Happening.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
I found it being the executor and caregiver for my grandmother.
She since passed, but one of the things we were
running up against is obviously finding people who could be
in the home and care for her, but we were
also being told that we would have to basically be
(28:36):
their employer, pay for taxes, social security, disability, all the
usual items that you would have if you employed someone.
I didn't know if that was actually true or if
they were just trying to coerce us into going with
(28:57):
an actual agency that already existed.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Ah, I'll take the legal, Liz, I'm.
Speaker 7 (29:01):
Wondering like hiring somebody off off of care dot com
for example.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
And Beth, there's so much involved in what you're talking about.
And the truth is, if you hire someone and they
become an employee and their labor law issues here, if
they're working forty hours for your mom or your grandmother,
and that's an employee by definition, so you have to
do things like workers' compensation, tax withholdings, unemployment insurance, they
(29:30):
are an employee. There are services we work with services
that will provide all that for you, kind of turnkey.
There's one right here in the Capital region that is
something we'll talk about a little bit, but it's a
service that does they even do the criminal background checks
on people that you want to hire. But when you
go through another portal, if you will, there's a state
(29:51):
program called the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, but in
order to get on that program, you have to be
Medicaid qualified. And that's what we do as attorneys. We
get people medicate qualified and for home care, that's a
very short process. We can get people medicate qualified for
home care right away about the next month, and then
you start the process of trying to find people. And
(30:13):
we'll talk about that with our care coordinators because that's
their job. We do the legal, the financial, We can
tee it up, we can tell you how to comply
with the law. But I will tell you this. I
do consults, probably ten to twelve a week with people
who are in this situation, and more than half say oh,
and I say, do you have any home help? Do
you have any home healthcare?
Speaker 5 (30:33):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
No, no, no, But we pay the next door neighbor
twenty dollars under the table to come over how often
actually coming over all six hours a day, five days
a week. And you know that's just reality. When you
need care, you'll do anything. And we have so many
clients that pay under the table, pay in cash. And yes,
there are rules, and they're absolutely correct that there are rules,
(30:55):
but I can tell you those rules are honored in
the breach more than the complied with. But you want
to get a plan and work with somebody who's a
professional that can maximize the value of your grandmother's resources.
What is her income, what are her assets? How long
can she private pay? Is Medicaid an option? Is that
something that she should be thinking, should have been thinking about?
(31:18):
And I'm going to go to who wants this one? Nina?
Speaker 4 (31:23):
I was chosen? Good morning, Beth.
Speaker 7 (31:25):
How are you good morning?
Speaker 8 (31:27):
So?
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yes, So we're talking about the CDPAP process through Medicaid.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
So if you become.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Consumer directed Personal Assistance program.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
I'm so used to using acronyms, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
So that program, it is wonderful because the caregiver, the
family gets to decide who they would like to hire,
and then another company comes in and they take over
that process, the documentation, those kinds of things. You still
have to provide it to them. You have to kind
of do the legwork to get it to that agency.
(32:00):
And certainly right now things are changing. So this process
is there's.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
A major upheaval in New York State in this program.
Just an aside, but there were six hundred companies running
the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance program. They were local, they
were right in your backyard. The governor decided that was
a bad idea. She thought it was wasteful. So they
are getting rid of those six hundred and going to
one single provider called PPL, and they're in the process
(32:27):
of transitioning all of that. It was supposed to happen.
Deadline was April first. They just pushed it back a
month and so now it's April thirtieth. But that's a
state program where you can hire people. Now, I'm going
to throw this out there. The dilemma is this. The
reimbursement rate by New York State is about eighteen dollars
(32:48):
an hour. How are you going to compete for care
with caregivers that are making twenty five and thirty dollars
an hour private pay and Beth, that is I don't
know if you faced that, but that's all also one
of the issues.
Speaker 8 (33:02):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
So how do you compete with that? I'll give you
the law firm answer. We create a second payroll, so
the people go on payroll for consumer directed our families
hire them to do other things. So you are using
a little bit of your own money to get that
person to come in and pay them a fair wage.
But it's possible, and we do it all the time,
(33:24):
and it's knowing how to navigate the system. And this
is why Nina. A family that doesn't know how to
bend these rules and make them work for them is
just at risk.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
I mean, we've had a situation where we had a
plan for a family to go to skilled nursing and
they were directed to they went a different direction and
they have filed for Community Medicaid by accident, and they
are surprised and upset that they cannot admit their family
member to a skilled nursing because the ninety day pri
(33:58):
hasn't been completed. There's lots of those kinds of steps
for placement, so you can be misled by people that
don't fully understand the system. And that's where we want
to talk about supplementing. You know, the money that you
would be paid for the hours by CDPAP, by consumer directed.
So in order to do that you have to be careful.
(34:19):
I would recommend financial advisement or legal advice.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Just legal advisement. Yes, it's because we actually do the payroll.
We do it.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Legally and you can't get in trouble. You don't have
to have that worry in the back of your.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
Mind, Diane, you wanted to add, well, I I was
just going to say that sometimes people might also think
they're being misled, but there's so much information, and that's
the benefit of having experts who know the system and
a team that knows how to navigate the system, because
(34:53):
you might think this just doesn't make sense to me,
and nobody's going to spend the time to explain it.
If they're the ones that are trying to get you
to go with that program, they're going to explain their program.
But we explain all options and all programs. We look
at it from a very broad perspective. The only goal
that we have is you meeting your needs, meeting your
(35:17):
loved ones needs. That's what we work for. So it
is a very confusing system. It is time consuming, confusing,
and we're the experts who know how the system works.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
So all of us here, Beth. I hope that started
to address your question. Do you have a follow up?
Speaker 7 (35:38):
Uh? No, that's good. It sort of gives me some
avenues to follow.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, it's not easy, it's not it's complex, and we're
going to go back to Diane to talk about how
ever home gets started and how these problems can be addressed.
There are solutions. They're not always easy, but Beth, thank
you for the call and we appreciate you calling in
this morning. If anybody else has a call, it's one
eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine and
(36:06):
you were starting to talk about however, home starts the
process and you can jump in with both feed or
you can kind of wade into the water.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (36:15):
We start the process by letting you know what our
services are because unfortunately there are decisions.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
To be made on our end too.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
We are we are a business and we want to
know what you can expect from us and what you need.
So we offer a couple of different levels of how
you can get involved with Ever Home Care Advisors. The
first level is you can just call in and talk
to us and get this information and find out what
we can do for you and that doesn't cost you anything,
(36:45):
and then will advise you and you make a decision.
It's always your decision. Then we offer a one hour
consultation that's two hundred and fifty dollars for one hour
with one of us, and we will sit down, we
will take basic information, find out what your situation is,
(37:06):
whether it's you or your loved one, what your goals are,
what your resources are, what the path looks like, and
then we will give you some options. We will say
here are the resources that you can access. Here's a
couple of different ways that you can go as far
as you could pursue this avenue of care, you could
(37:29):
pursue this referral, etc. And at the end of that hour,
we give you information that you may say, Okay, great,
I understand now, thank you very much. I think I
can take it from here. I have brothers and sisters
that can help me, and we're good, and then we're
done until you might need us again. Or you can say, wow,
(37:51):
I can't handle this, what can you do for me?
And then you can engage us as care coordinators that
would be on an hours or we could do a
full assessment coming to your home and really looking at
the safety the environment of the home of the individual
that needs the care.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And I'm going to jump in here because I used
to do that as a lawyer, as a young lawyer,
because I had time and my buildable rate was much lower,
So I used to go to people's homes and sit
around the kitchen table and they would pull out all
the insurance policies and I'd review their Medicare insurance. They
have long term care insurance? You know, God help them
if they did, because now you've got something, a resource
(38:32):
that you can utilize, and not enough people have it.
But I would do all of that, look at their assets,
look at their documents, wills, powers of attorney, healthcare proxies,
and do my own assessment. And I had about a
six or seven page letter that I would craft and
I would send to them. And then I realized, Okay,
I know the law, I know the financial side of this,
I know how Medicaid works, but I'm not an expert
(38:53):
in healthcare. I'm not an expert in the treatments that
they have available in the medical resources and the healthcare
resource is that they have available. So then I had
to go to a care coordinator to do that. So
that in home assessment, and I would walk through the
you know, you open the refrigerator door, is it fresh?
Is it spoiled? Are they eating properly? You go into
(39:15):
the bathroom and you kind of look around and see
what's going on. You look at the rugs, you know,
are they at risk for falls? I was doing that
as a lawyer. That's not what I do. You need
someone to do that assessment, and James talked about that
in the initial call. Nina, you do those assessments, you
go into the home. Just talk a little bit about
what that assessment is and what that family can expect.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Yes, so the home assessment can take as long as
we would like it to take, so it includes a
complete assessment of the home. It completes. I will do
standardized assessments of cognition, balance, ADLs, activities of daily living,
(39:58):
instrumental activities of daily living, safety concerns.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
Balance, fall risk.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
These are all standardized assessments that we can take again
and use them as a baseline, and doctors can use
them and rely on them as guidelines and resources when
we're making referrals.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
So that is part of it. We look at.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
The home, we decide what the family wants, like we
really want to keep Dad on the second floor. Okay,
let's figure that one out. Do we need just two
hand railings, do we need a stairlift?
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Let's look at this.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
And elevator is about one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
An elevator is pretty expensive. So after this full assessment.
We take in a lot of information. You know that
we encourage and almost require family to be there because
we want to make sure that everyone is engaged in
coordinating with us.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
After this assessment is completed.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I will take all of that data, all of your information,
your likes, your dislikes, your music preferences. If mom and
dad haven't been able to play like puzzles or play games,
I'm going to address that because that's important to them
and their quality of life. So you're going to expect
a comprehensive care plan that is going to lay out,
(41:17):
detail by detail, exactly how you reach each of your goals,
every single one of them.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Oh, Sherry, my clients say, well, don't I get that
through my health insurance plan. Don't I get that through
my Medicare plan? Don't I get that through with the state.
Doesn't the Office for Aging come to my house and
do this assessment. You guys are all from the healthcare system.
What's the reality check there?
Speaker 5 (41:42):
So the reality there is, yes, you do get an assessment.
Is it an in depth assessment as Nina just described?
Speaker 1 (41:50):
No?
Speaker 5 (41:51):
And is it the follow through and the plan of
care and the tools and checking in on you did
that option work. So for the volume of individuals in reality,
that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Like health care providers. Your primary care provider gets five
minutes to spend with you, and they may have a
network that they can refer to, but they get twenty
minutes to spend with you. That's their budget and that's
what they get paid for. My experience is that you
need someone in your corner that advocate the healthcare sirpa
that's going to navigate in the home through the facilities,
(42:29):
look at all the options, every option, and it's the
old blind man in the elephant. Depends on what your
perspective is. Are you a hospital, are you a nursing home,
are you a home health agency? You know, they all
have their own perspectives, but the patient's perspective is the
most important. Yes.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
And the other big part is they'll give you a
resource list or a resource directory that's maybe five years old,
maybe one year old, but the number has changed. And
what we're able to do at ever Home Care Advisors
is we have constant relationships with so many of the
(43:07):
agencies and community supports that really can help.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
So we're gonna come back after the last short break
I'm going to talk about a program coming up on
April seventeenth that Diane and I and my partner Frank
Kenny are gonna do your home or the nursing home,
where we're going to really dig into all of these
issues legal, financial and care issues and help our clients plan.
So if you want to join us for that seminar,
stay tuned. We'll be back right after this short break
(43:42):
the exactly Little Beatles intro and we're coming back talking
with Nniker, Sanda Sherry Catapano, and Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski. Took
me a while to get that name right, and they're
from ever Home Care Advisors and this is a business,
a company that helps families and clients stay at home,
(44:03):
stay independent. And I can tell you from my own
experience as a caregiver my mom, my uncle who we
had on Consumer Directed and with Joe Jackson's help, we
were able to put a caer plan together where we
had five people twenty four to seven care for four
or five years, where my uncle was able to stay independent.
He was a brilliant man who's very bright. His back
(44:25):
was broken, couldn't get in an out of a chair,
needed twenty four to seven care. But these women became
part of the fabric of his life for those last
five years and they did a phenomenal job. They all
came to the funeral. He left money to each and
every one of those five in his will. That's how
much they meant to him. And if it's done right,
(44:47):
that's the experience, and that's the experience that you're looking for.
But it doesn't happen by accident. So we're going to
talk about how to plan for this, how to prepare
for this, and it's going to be on April seventeenth.
It's going to be at the Colony Town Line Iry
at one pm and we're going to talk about all
of these topics. Please join us Thursday, April seventeenth, one
pm and you can sign up as always on our
(45:10):
website Puerrolaw dot com, p I E R r O
Law dot com. Go to the events tab and sign
up for April seventeenths Seminar Your Home with the Nursing Home.
We have Bob on the phone. Good morning, Bob, Hi.
Speaker 8 (45:28):
Good morning. Unfortunately missed most of your program, but one
question was that is ever home care advisors? Do they
work in other States.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
So we're going to give a two part answer to that.
They have a network. They're part of a network, and
I'll let Diane talk about that network where there are
counterparts in other states. But they also have a technology
system that is available in those other states as well.
Speaker 6 (45:58):
So Diane, Hi, Bob, thanks for calling in the three
people that are here on this call this show today.
We work primarily regionally in the Capital District, but we
are part of an organization called ALCA, another acronym aging
Life Care Association, and we have friends, co workers, peers, colleagues,
(46:23):
and we're part of a network that is all over
the nation. So if someone needs a care coordinator in
a certain location, we can match you with someone and
those people are all bound by the same ethical guidelines
as part of this organization and offer services that are
very very similar. But beyond that ever, Home Care Advisors
(46:45):
has a sister company called FEVA Links and we work
for that company. I work for that company as well,
and we provide the technology that I referred to before.
You may not have been on the call to hear
about that. But so we have clients. For example, the son, daughter,
family member is the client lives here in the capital district,
(47:09):
but their loved one might be across the state line somewhere.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Else in Florida.
Speaker 6 (47:15):
In Florida, we have technology that we can help connect
you to your loved one with in home device for
the person that needs the care, and then an app,
which is our app called Viva Links, where you're connected
to that in home device and there is a broad
spectrum of services that are available there and different technologies
(47:39):
depending on how much the person needs it. Does go
back to that assessment, so we talk about the remote caregiver.
I mean I was able to help and participate in
my mom's care from forty five miles away, but once
you involve technology, that forty five miles away could have
been four hundred and fifty miles away or a thousand
(48:00):
miles away. So I think we'll start with that initial
phone call, find out what the needs are. So if
the loved one is in another state, we can help
get you set up there. If you're in another state
and your loved one is here, then this team could
be on you know, boots on the ground for that person.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
So great, Bob, if you wanted to call up ever home,
they could help connect you to wherever your.
Speaker 8 (48:24):
Parent is okay, Yes, this is my stepmother and she's
out in Illinois. My brother and sister in law are
kind of, you know, taking care of things. But I thought, well,
if as any way I could help, I certainly would
like to do that.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Well, this enables that Viva links is. It's a revolutionary
app and a revolutionary program. You could have five siblings
if you want them all participating in the care. They
can all be on the app. They can all video
chat mom and dad. They can help manage medications, they
can help manage transportation, calendar schedules, all the things the
app does. And then there's additional technology and Diane was
(49:03):
talking about the sensors, cameras, the other things that can
be layered in so that you can be a remote
caregiver and really control the entire care plan Nina.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Within a hippocompliance system. Yes, that means your information is protected.
No one else can have access to it unless it's
the people that you designate.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Very good point, Bob, does that answer your question?
Speaker 8 (49:28):
Contact the everhome care advisors and good time to.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Give that phone number out there.
Speaker 6 (49:32):
Here we go eight four four six three three three
eight five two that's eight four four six three three
three eight five two, or you can go on www
dot ever homecare dot com.
Speaker 8 (49:47):
Very good, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Okay, thanks for calling Bob and Dane. You have some
other resources. Thanks Bob for that call. On that website
and it links to the Viva Links website as well,
So the two go hand in hand. As you said,
high touch, because you need the caregivers to there's not
going to be any technology problem program until the robots
(50:09):
are ready for this to take somebody to the bathroom,
give them a shower, do the things that they need
to do. Now. The Jetsons was a very, very way
ahead of its time cartoon and Rosie the robot was
doing this and Elroy was getting telemedicine visits. I use
slides from that show, believe it or not. But every
home and viv Links are here today. And Diane, one
(50:30):
more time, how do they contact you?
Speaker 6 (50:33):
Call eight four four six three three three eight five
two eight four four six three three eight three eight.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Five two, Nini crisandezs Sherry Catapanto, Diane, Michel Gottabiowski. Thank
you for sharing your expertise. If any of you are
just tuning in late and you want to hear the
rest of the show. We are on Spotify. You can
find us on Spotify. The shows will be posted there.
You can go to wgy dot com. They also have
the shows up on their website. And I want to
thank you for taking the time to listen to the
(51:00):
morning to Life Happens Radio. Hope you can join us
next week and we will be back on WGY
Good morning everyone, Welcome to Life Happens Radio. I'm your
host Lupiro for this morning from Pierre O'Connor and Straussen.
We have a great show for you today and it's
going to focus on something that is important to all
of us at some point in our lives. Some of
you may be going through this now. And I think
it was Matilda Cuomo, Mario's wife who wrote to several
books and was quoted as saying, you either are a caregiver,
(00:25):
you will be a caregiver, or you've been a caregiver,
and being a caregiver, a lot of people don't even
realize that they are. You're taking care of needs of
another human being. In many cases, you start that journey
as a parent and you're the caregiver for your children,
but then the roles reverse and now as your parents' age,
(00:47):
your children grow, you are aging through your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties,
and now you become the caregiver for your parents, and
that role reversal is shock to some. And last week
we had a caller and I haven't done this before,
but we had a caller whose call was so pertinent
(01:08):
and so on point. For today's show that I'm going
to repeat it, and James, if you're out there, thank
you for the call last week, and I'm going to
play it right now. And good morning, James, Welcome to
Life Happens.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Hey, good morning. I would recommend you guys are a
law firm that specializes in some of this preparation for
getting older and maybe guiding some of these I just
listened to the caller you were talking to, guiding them
through some of the challenges they're about to face with
(01:44):
their mother that's now had a broken hip. There's an
entire opportunity out there in this world for a company
to embrace the challenges of this part of life. Literally,
we just went through this over five years in my
family with my mom and she recently passed, you know,
(02:05):
lover to pieces and we dealt with it right straight
through COVID. She broke her hip, just like this lady
that you just were talking about. She went into a
rehab facility that was during COVID. She was in rehab
for sixteen months. I couldn't see her. I couldn't none
(02:25):
of our siblings could go see her or visit her.
We ended up pulling her out, bringing her home She's
got a seventeen room Victorian house, and not one part
of that house was prepared to have her living there
as a person with severe disability. So we had to
go through the construction phases of remodeling the home, and
(02:46):
then we had to get caregivers. I don't care how
much money you have. You can have all the money
in the world, but to get real, good quality caregivers
that can help you twenty four to seven, it's almost impossible.
So the challenges involved in this are absolutely off the charts.
There are programs out there that the state and federal
(03:09):
will help you with, but the hoops that you got
to go through in the waiting periods you got to
go through, you're at the mercy of the system. I'm
telling you, it is the most unreal thing you'll ever
go through. You could be a young couple gonna have
a baby, okay, and you've been senting you you've had
no children for the first three years of your marriage,
(03:29):
and now you've got a serious, a serious, a serious
change of time in your lives as having your first
child when your parents get old and they are no
longer able to be on their own. It's just like
having kids coming into the family even worse though, because
the challenges that are involved in that, all of the
(03:49):
healthcare visits and everything that they can be having. And
then they go through phases because they've been very independent
all their lives, they go through phases of depression and
all kinds as issues of their own that are overwhelming.
They I'm not saying they're looking to commit suicide, but
they can be very difficult to deal with. They don't
want to eat, they don't want to eat certain foods,
(04:11):
they don't want to go to the bathroom when they
need to. I could go on and on and on
of five years of living with this, and I'm telling you,
somebody needs to start a company that can understand every
aspect of this. I'm talking about lining up contractors to
be able to do work. I'm talking about every phase
(04:33):
of taking care of elderly at home because ultimately that's
where it needs to be is in your house. That's
where they're the most happy, is when they're in their
own space.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And that is our lead in for today's show. And James,
thank you for that call. It was not a show
about a company to solve those problems, but we just
happened to have had the guests that I have in
studio today lined up already when James called, so I
had to play that just to lead into today's conversation
about care, health care, long term care. How do you
(05:07):
navigate a healthcare system that is so badly fractured and
broken that no one, doctors, hospitals can't make sense of it,
let alone the patience being pushed through this system and
breaking a hip and going to the emergency room should
not be a death sentence, but in today's healthcare system
(05:27):
it can be unless you have the right help. So
I am very thrilled today to have live with me
in studio the representatives of ever Home Care Advisors and
Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, who is the vice president of client Services,
and Diane has been on the show before. We have
with us also Nina Cressanda and Sherry Catapano, who are
(05:48):
people at ever Home that work day to day with
families in helping to solve these problems. And I'm going
to go left to right, So Nina, I want to
start with you because the healthcare system is something that
I see and I have been witnessing for my whole career,
and that's forty years of practicing law and elder law
and special needs and it is just disintegrating before our eyes.
(06:09):
You worked in the healthcare system. How has that background,
what was that background? How has that helped you today
working with our families. Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Absolutely so. I've been an occupational therapist. I've been treating
since twenty seventeen. I first started working at the Center
for Disability Services with individuals and adults with disabilities. From there,
I transitioned to traveling therapy so I could become more independent.
I managed two skilled nursing facilities in different areas in
South Carolina. I moved to Syracuse after that, and I
(06:39):
worked at Upstate in their acute care. I did criminal
functional assessments as well as final assessments home assessments to
get them back to their highest level of independence. From there,
I worked at an assisted living and independent living facility.
I was the sole OT for three hundred residents. I
would go to their homes, complete home evaluation and make
(07:00):
sure that their goals were the goals that we were
working on together. I've also worked through some hospital systems,
admitting clients to different rehab facilities and determining if they
are effective or if the facility is the appropriate match
for the client. So my core focus as an OT
(07:21):
has always been and continues to be meeting clients where
they are, prioritizing their needs, their goals to preserve their
independence and enhance their overall quality of life.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
You're no longer inside the healthcare system. You're not working
for hospital systems or doctors or healthcare systems.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Now you're outside the healthcare system, And just describe that transition,
what you do today and how that background helps you.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
So a lot of times when I was in OT,
I would run into barriers, like I couldn't get doctors
on the phone, I couldn't do lots of things because
I just didn't have the time. My sole focus now
is working on those goals, is getting everything, spending my
time making sure that I'm solving my client's problems. And
(08:08):
I can do that now outside of the system by
being able to have access to tons of resources, networking
and other opportunities that we can bring to our clients
to enhance their lives.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And I think knowing what's going on inside the system
absolutely helps the people and the patients and their families
that are coming into the system cold that don't have
that knowledge. So I know that we were sharing stories,
and you have a recent success story. Just tell our
listeners about that and how you can make a difference.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Sure, this doesn't often happen.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I would like to preface that, but I was hired
on Monday this week.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
That's recent.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
That's pretty recent.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
The client needs twenty four to seven care and in
order to get home, he was going to be discharged wednesday.
So we need to define that super super fast. And
I called every agency in their county. Wasn't getting a
lot of luck. Then I got some luck, and on Tuesday,
I got the call and we set up twenty four
(09:13):
to seven care for that gentleman to start Wednesday night.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
And that is, as you said, unusual.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
It doesn't normally happen to be able to.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Find that unicorns. Home Health Aids have become unicorns trying
to find the right care, the right home healthcare and
put a program together. And I'll talk about my experiences
because I've been doing it as a caregiver with my mom,
with my uncle, with my dad. And we're gonna go
over to Sherry Cherry Catapano, who comes at it from
a little different angle, but with a background similar in
(09:41):
healthcare and now.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Hi, good morning. I'm Cherry Catapano. As Lou said, I'm
a licensed Master social worker and a certified case manager,
and I worked over thirty years in the healthcare system
at a not for profit local healthcare organismation and I
have seen for years how our system tried to be innovative,
(10:06):
to try to help a lot of the fragmentation and
to try to help a lot of our members. However,
since retiring from that system and being on the outside,
I have seen how the system has gotten even more fragmented,
more confused to navigate through and the follow through for
(10:28):
patients at a time when they really need the care
and their caregivers are really beside themselves because there's no
manual that comes with any of this. There's nothing that
a caregiver can say, oh, let me do ABC that
will work. It'll solve my mom's problems. That's not how
it works for the caregiver and the family. You have
(10:50):
to figure out what do they want, what do they need,
and what can they do and then the next step
is to know the network, to know the agencies, to
know the infrastructure to know how to access these programs,
and that was something that I had learned and had
quite a good database of those resources to kind of
(11:12):
put the two together. However, in saying that that doesn't
mean that agency worked last week will work this week.
It still really takes somebody coordinating that care that's on
the outside can listen to everyone. And I'm so thrilled
to be working for a company that allows me to
(11:33):
do that, to really help people one person at a time, literally,
and it's great and I really look forward to a
lot of success stories that I can share.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Like Nina, just dad, So you're newer to ever Home
Care Advisors, but the team is growing, and I want
to turn over now to Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, who has
been working with Everhome for a time now, who was
also an active caregiver and has been for her parents
and as part of a team that I'm kind of
part of as well, developing new resources. The whole system.
(12:07):
The healthcare system has to be innovated in ways that
are hard because so many stakeholders have financial interests and
what you're trying to do is reduce cost, which in
some cases reduces profit. So how do we get to
patient back in the middle of all this and Diane
talk about your experiences with Everhome as a caregiver and
(12:28):
the exciting things that ever Home is working on.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
Sure, thanks and good morning everyone. I'm happy to be here,
and my experience is as a physical therapist for many
years in the healthcare system, working in it in various
levels and layers. But when I came to Everhome, I
was working prior to that in the home care arena,
but my mom was ill and I was her primary caregiver.
(12:56):
My parents were living in their own home. My dad
is still very vibrant and kicking butt at ninety one,
but my mom unfortunately passed. But whatever Home and its
sister company, Viva Links allowed me to do was be
part of the development of something very exciting to help
(13:17):
caregivers connect with keep connection with their loved ones in
their home. At the same time, I was able to
take advantage of those opportunities in my own situation, so
I could help evaluate the system and see how it
could develop going forward. So I was able to keep
(13:38):
contact with my mom by sensors in the home, by
video chats, by the technology that Viva Links was able
to provide and working with ever Home hand in hand
to advance goals, to see what we needed as a family,
to see what my mom needed as an individual, to
see what my dad needed as a caregiver in the home,
(13:59):
and then to see what resources are available out there,
and using the strength of ever Home to access those resources,
using the strength of Evil Lengths to tie it all together,
to put that as we like to say, the human
touch meets technology or tech enabled care coordination. So it's
been very exciting to be part of this, and I
(14:20):
think it's the future.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
It's the present, but it's the future.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
So you had a dad in the home who was
a caregiver for a mom in the home with Alzheimer's,
and you were the daughter who was trying to coordinate
it all while working an hour away and not having
to run down there every five minutes when there was
a situation. Just talk a little bit about how it
helped your dad as the caregiver.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Sure, So.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
Alzheimer's is a path that it's horrible, a horrible path.
We all know that, and it's different for every single person.
And my mom was physically able to be up and about,
but needed those cots of assists, and my dad would
really need to be there all the time, just anticipating
what her needs were. With the cameras and the sensors
(15:10):
we put in the home, my dad was able to
start his day if my mom was not ready to
start her day, which was typically what happened, and he
would be able to start his day and then get
a text message that would say my mom was out
of bed, or he'd get some kind of alert that
my mom was up and about. He could stop what
(15:33):
he was doing prior to that. He would just wait,
and it gave him some freedom there. It also allowed
him to know if my mom was out of bed
in the.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Middle of the night.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
We know when certain doors open, if my mom let
someone in the front door and he was out in
the garden and the front door opened. So there's a
huge sense of safety, but there's also very practical information
and that's what as I now work for this company,
I say it helps us make decisions based on information
(16:05):
in real time in the home, whether you're in the
home or not.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
So as a lawyer, we are problem solvers. Clients come
to us because something's wrong or they want to plan
to prevent things from happening and going wrong, and as
problem solvers, we can only do so much. We can
do legal planning, we can do financial planning, but we
can't do the care planning that's necessary for our clients.
(16:29):
So we have to take a short break. When we
come back, we're going to talk about ever home care Advisors,
Viva Links, going to open up the phone lines. I
want to thank James again for teeing this up because
this is a problem that is not going to go away.
It is not getting better or easier. And the solutions
that we're bringing you today, folks are innovative and I
(16:50):
would say unique, not just in the Capital region but
in the country. Stay with us. We'll be right back turbatch.
I'm Luke Kiro, your host for this morning, an attorney
from kiero' connor and Strauss in studio with three non attorneys,
three people that were professionals in the healthcare system that
(17:11):
are now working outside the healthcare system for clients who
are in it, who need assistants, who need guidance, who
need to be taken through the maze of healthcare choices,
long term care choices. And we're going to go back
and kind of go through all of this, but I
do want to open up our phone lines. If you
have a call, if you're a caregiver, you have a
caregiving question, or you want to talk to any of
(17:33):
our caregivers here, give us a call at eight hundred
eight two five five nine four nine. It's eight hundred
talk WGY again eight hundred eight two five fifty nine
forty nine And Nina, I'm going to come back to you.
You've had you shared one of your success stories, and
I know that that is an unusual two day turnaround
(17:56):
to get a twenty four to seven care plan. And
I'll share my story and what led me into this
whole area from a caregiving perspective. I was a caregiver
for my mother twenty five years ago and she had
Alzheimer's and I hired hired a gentleman by the name
of Joe Jackson, who at the time was one of
(18:16):
the only geriatric care managers that's what they were called
then in the Capitol Region. And he wasn't even in
the Capitol region. He was in Lenox, Massachusetts, and all
but in New York. There were zero twenty five years ago,
nobody doing the job that you ladies are doing today.
So Joe Jackson put a care plan together for my mom.
He found caregivers, he interviewed them, screened them, did background
checks on them, and whittled it down to four. My
(18:39):
sister and I interviewed the four. We hired two and
they became my mother's caregivers for about three years, four
years where we kept her at home and it was
a relationship where they would take her out to lunch.
You get to bond when you have a consistent care team.
You get to bond with people and the system today,
if you're going to a home health agency, Nina is
(19:00):
isn't exactly that?
Speaker 4 (19:01):
No, it isn't. It's not so.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I mean, when we are considering home health agencies and
finding people, a lot of the concerns that we have
with the financial concern of the hourly rates, you know,
finding the right match for people because the human connection
is so important. Social isolation has been a pandemic, just
like COVID has. The effects of individuals with depression is
(19:28):
only skyrocketed, especially in the older adult population. So getting
caregivers that are the appropriate match with the appropriate level
of skill does take some finding, some research, some real investigation,
and thought and collaboration with the family and the client
and Cherry.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You came from the health insurance world partly and the
health insurance plans, and we've had people here from CDPHP,
We've had people here from other insurance companies. Medicare advantage
plans have tried to innovate and bring new services to
the table. Telemedicine has been brought into a lot of
the health insurance plans, and you have just a complex
(20:12):
array of different medic gap plans, Medicare advantage plans. People
need help just sorting out the insurance options, and that's
something that the state actually has an agency and a
part of the state government, the Office for Aging, that
helps people through that. But nobody knows those resources are there.
(20:33):
So how do we get people to utilize the resources
that are available to them.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Lou You're so correct.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
I would have many conversations and no one would really
know who just called them and where they were from.
Because after a hospitalization, you can be bombarded from your
doctor's office, calling from the home care agency, calling from
the hospital, calling from the health insurance calling, and you
just have a common with them, and you really don't
(21:01):
know their purpose and their goal. And that's what's for
me about ever Homecare Advisors is great. Because I'm calling
from ever Homecare Advisors. You will know who I am
and kind of be able to trust me because the
relationship is key, and then to build on that relationship.
(21:23):
So you are exactly correct in the fact that and
it's a time also too when people don't feel good,
so you really have to take that into consideration. You know,
they're not feeling great, and they're getting calls from four
or five different places asking the exact same questions, and
they don't know where to turn. And that's why ever
(21:46):
Homecare Advisors is just such a wonderful resource to fill
so many gaps.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
My experience I went through nine years ago. I just
had my nine year anniversary open hearts. I've talked about
it on the show. Quintuple bypass surgery and a valve replacement,
a very major surgery. And when I got home, you know,
I was a lawyer at age fifty seven and I'm
ready to get back to work, and the phone just
kept bringing and it was post hospitalization follow up calls.
(22:18):
And they were calling me. Why because they got paid
to call me, Because there's reimbursement when somebody leaves the
hospital and goes home. There's reimbursement for hospital follow up,
and there's this magic thirty day window. If they can
keep you out of the hospital for thirty days, they
get a bonus check. But if you go on day
thirty one, they get paid again for your readmission, So
(22:41):
that thirty days is a cliff and the phone stops
ringing after thirty days. I did have one my primary
and it was CDPHP that kept calling me after that
and did more follow up and actually came to the
house and did a follow up check. But hospitalizations today
can be lethal, and they can be so confusing because,
(23:04):
as you said, trying to find home care while you're
in the hospital. You know, what's your experience with that,
and how do people deal with all of this incoming
information and then all of a sudden you get dropped.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
We'll even tell you I've had an experience where a
client that was not cognitively intact was approached with paperwork
and they asked him to sign it, even though it
was well documented that he was not able to do so.
So when we're in the hospital, we need as a patient,
(23:37):
you need an advocate, you need someone to speak up
for you. You need someone that can dedicate their time, attention,
and resources because phone calls add up. When you're calling
agency after agency, it is frustrating.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
It takes time.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
You have to ask a lot of the same questions,
and sometimes they want information you may not know as
a patient or a caregiver.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
We're gonna take a short break for the news. When
we come back, we're gonna dig back into this and
I'll open up the phone lines again. Zach's waiting for
your calls. Eight hundred talk WGY. That's eight hundred eight
two five five nine four nine. Folks, if you haven't
faced this situation, prepare yourself and I'm going to talk
about that on the flip side, because James was exactly right.
(24:23):
You need to be prepared, and hopefully if you listen
to this show, you will be. We'll be right back.
There are places I remember on a cloudy, rainy, prizzly day.
Hopefully you're staying with us for this. What to me
(24:44):
is a show that you shouldn't miss because there are
so many times in your life that you're gonna have responsibilities,
caregiving responsibilities, and we started with that. When you have children,
it's your first job is to be a caregiver for
those children. Make sure you have a plan and as
time goes on, you'll be a caregiver for your parents
(25:05):
if they age and have needs, and at some point
you'll be a caregiver for your spouse, and then you'll
be a caregiver for yourself. If you want to be independent,
you want to live independently. And we have some great
stories of people who have fought their way through this system,
and we can talk about Stanley and a part of
our conversation, but how do you access this quality of care?
(25:29):
And again, if you want to ask questions eight hundred
eight two five five nine, four nine, we're going to
come back to you. Diane, Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, the vice
president of client services at ever Home Care Advisors. How
does ever Home start this process? And what can people
and families do to get information?
Speaker 6 (25:49):
Sure? What you do to start the processes call us,
but you might be referred to us.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
You could.
Speaker 6 (25:55):
We receive referrals from multiple different sources, whether it be
from elder law attorneys, hospital discharge planners, friends in the community.
And once you call us, the very first thing, and
I want to reiterate something that Nina said before is
that we find out what your needs are and.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
What you want.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
It may not be the same thing, but what you
want is very important, and that's what we're going to
work on to advance what your goals are. But we're
going to do that and let you know what's reasonable
to what are reasonable expectations, because we all want.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Pie in the sky. Just out of curiosity, how many
times is it the actual patient calling and how many
times is it the child caregiver calling.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
I'm going to just pull a number out of the
air here, but I would say seventy five percent of
the time it's the child or the caregiver calling. And
but we do have patients that do call, but it's
certainly not the majority. It's usually the caregiver and it's
based on need. And we also we have a client
that very astutely says, if you wait until you are
(27:01):
in a crisis, you've waited too later, if you wait
if it's imminent. So if you're in if your loved
one is in the nursing home and they've been talking
about discharge and now that is tomorrow, that is certainly
not the time to get things lined up. So discharge
begins the day you enter any facility, that discussion.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
And if you don't know that, you need to because
the minute they they put your name on a piece
of paper, they're looking at the discharge plan and.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
They're projecting the discharge plan. And what you really want
to make sure that happens is that they're projecting the
discharge plan based on what you want, but what you're
able to do as well, because everyone doesn't have the
same opportunities.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
So we look at all that.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
From the call perspective and then we will see what
services we provide fit with what you need. It's not
a one size fits all. It's how how much time
we have to do something, what your resource, and what
your payment structure is as well. Sometimes it is how
(28:06):
much you can afford to do, and we'll try to
fit that all in.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
We're going to take a call. We have Beth in Troy.
Good morning, Beth, Welcome to life Happening.
Speaker 7 (28:16):
I found it being the executor and caregiver for my grandmother.
She since passed, but one of the things we were
running up against is obviously finding people who could be
in the home and care for her, but we were
also being told that we would have to basically be
(28:36):
their employer, pay for taxes, social security, disability, all the
usual items that you would have if you employed someone.
I didn't know if that was actually true or if
they were just trying to coerce us into going with
(28:57):
an actual agency that already existed.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Ah, I'll take the legal, Liz, I'm.
Speaker 7 (29:01):
Wondering like hiring somebody off off of care dot com
for example.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
And Beth, there's so much involved in what you're talking about.
And the truth is, if you hire someone and they
become an employee and their labor law issues here, if
they're working forty hours for your mom or your grandmother,
and that's an employee by definition, so you have to
do things like workers' compensation, tax withholdings, unemployment insurance, they
(29:30):
are an employee. There are services we work with services
that will provide all that for you, kind of turnkey.
There's one right here in the Capital region that is
something we'll talk about a little bit, but it's a
service that does they even do the criminal background checks
on people that you want to hire. But when you
go through another portal, if you will, there's a state
(29:51):
program called the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, but in
order to get on that program, you have to be
Medicaid qualified. And that's what we do as attorneys. We
get people medicate qualified and for home care, that's a
very short process. We can get people medicate qualified for
home care right away about the next month, and then
you start the process of trying to find people. And
(30:13):
we'll talk about that with our care coordinators because that's
their job. We do the legal, the financial, We can
tee it up, we can tell you how to comply
with the law. But I will tell you this. I
do consults, probably ten to twelve a week with people
who are in this situation, and more than half say oh,
and I say, do you have any home help? Do
you have any home healthcare?
Speaker 5 (30:33):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
No, no, no, But we pay the next door neighbor
twenty dollars under the table to come over how often
actually coming over all six hours a day, five days
a week. And you know that's just reality. When you
need care, you'll do anything. And we have so many
clients that pay under the table, pay in cash. And yes,
there are rules, and they're absolutely correct that there are rules,
(30:55):
but I can tell you those rules are honored in
the breach more than the complied with. But you want
to get a plan and work with somebody who's a
professional that can maximize the value of your grandmother's resources.
What is her income, what are her assets? How long
can she private pay? Is Medicaid an option? Is that
something that she should be thinking, should have been thinking about?
(31:18):
And I'm going to go to who wants this one? Nina?
Speaker 4 (31:23):
I was chosen? Good morning, Beth.
Speaker 7 (31:25):
How are you good morning?
Speaker 8 (31:27):
So?
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yes, So we're talking about the CDPAP process through Medicaid.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
So if you become.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Consumer directed Personal Assistance program.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
I'm so used to using acronyms, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
So that program, it is wonderful because the caregiver, the
family gets to decide who they would like to hire,
and then another company comes in and they take over
that process, the documentation, those kinds of things. You still
have to provide it to them. You have to kind
of do the legwork to get it to that agency.
(32:00):
And certainly right now things are changing. So this process
is there's.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
A major upheaval in New York State in this program.
Just an aside, but there were six hundred companies running
the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance program. They were local, they
were right in your backyard. The governor decided that was
a bad idea. She thought it was wasteful. So they
are getting rid of those six hundred and going to
one single provider called PPL, and they're in the process
(32:27):
of transitioning all of that. It was supposed to happen.
Deadline was April first. They just pushed it back a
month and so now it's April thirtieth. But that's a
state program where you can hire people. Now, I'm going
to throw this out there. The dilemma is this. The
reimbursement rate by New York State is about eighteen dollars
(32:48):
an hour. How are you going to compete for care
with caregivers that are making twenty five and thirty dollars
an hour private pay and Beth, that is I don't
know if you faced that, but that's all also one
of the issues.
Speaker 8 (33:02):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
So how do you compete with that? I'll give you
the law firm answer. We create a second payroll, so
the people go on payroll for consumer directed our families
hire them to do other things. So you are using
a little bit of your own money to get that
person to come in and pay them a fair wage.
But it's possible, and we do it all the time,
(33:24):
and it's knowing how to navigate the system. And this
is why Nina. A family that doesn't know how to
bend these rules and make them work for them is
just at risk.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
I mean, we've had a situation where we had a
plan for a family to go to skilled nursing and
they were directed to they went a different direction and
they have filed for Community Medicaid by accident, and they
are surprised and upset that they cannot admit their family
member to a skilled nursing because the ninety day pri
(33:58):
hasn't been completed. There's lots of those kinds of steps
for placement, so you can be misled by people that
don't fully understand the system. And that's where we want
to talk about supplementing. You know, the money that you
would be paid for the hours by CDPAP, by consumer directed.
So in order to do that you have to be careful.
(34:19):
I would recommend financial advisement or legal advice.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Just legal advisement. Yes, it's because we actually do the payroll.
We do it.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Legally and you can't get in trouble. You don't have
to have that worry in the back of your.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
Mind, Diane, you wanted to add, well, I I was
just going to say that sometimes people might also think
they're being misled, but there's so much information, and that's
the benefit of having experts who know the system and
a team that knows how to navigate the system, because
(34:53):
you might think this just doesn't make sense to me,
and nobody's going to spend the time to explain it.
If they're the ones that are trying to get you
to go with that program, they're going to explain their program.
But we explain all options and all programs. We look
at it from a very broad perspective. The only goal
that we have is you meeting your needs, meeting your
(35:17):
loved ones needs. That's what we work for. So it
is a very confusing system. It is time consuming, confusing,
and we're the experts who know how the system works.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
So all of us here, Beth. I hope that started
to address your question. Do you have a follow up?
Speaker 7 (35:38):
Uh? No, that's good. It sort of gives me some
avenues to follow.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, it's not easy, it's not it's complex, and we're
going to go back to Diane to talk about how
ever home gets started and how these problems can be addressed.
There are solutions. They're not always easy, but Beth, thank
you for the call and we appreciate you calling in
this morning. If anybody else has a call, it's one
eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine and
(36:06):
you were starting to talk about however, home starts the
process and you can jump in with both feed or
you can kind of wade into the water.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (36:15):
We start the process by letting you know what our
services are because unfortunately there are decisions.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
To be made on our end too.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
We are we are a business and we want to
know what you can expect from us and what you need.
So we offer a couple of different levels of how
you can get involved with Ever Home Care Advisors. The
first level is you can just call in and talk
to us and get this information and find out what
we can do for you and that doesn't cost you anything,
(36:45):
and then will advise you and you make a decision.
It's always your decision. Then we offer a one hour
consultation that's two hundred and fifty dollars for one hour
with one of us, and we will sit down, we
will take basic information, find out what your situation is,
(37:06):
whether it's you or your loved one, what your goals are,
what your resources are, what the path looks like, and
then we will give you some options. We will say
here are the resources that you can access. Here's a
couple of different ways that you can go as far
as you could pursue this avenue of care, you could
(37:29):
pursue this referral, etc. And at the end of that hour,
we give you information that you may say, Okay, great,
I understand now, thank you very much. I think I
can take it from here. I have brothers and sisters
that can help me, and we're good, and then we're
done until you might need us again. Or you can say, wow,
(37:51):
I can't handle this, what can you do for me?
And then you can engage us as care coordinators that
would be on an hours or we could do a
full assessment coming to your home and really looking at
the safety the environment of the home of the individual
that needs the care.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And I'm going to jump in here because I used
to do that as a lawyer, as a young lawyer,
because I had time and my buildable rate was much lower,
So I used to go to people's homes and sit
around the kitchen table and they would pull out all
the insurance policies and I'd review their Medicare insurance. They
have long term care insurance? You know, God help them
if they did, because now you've got something, a resource
(38:32):
that you can utilize, and not enough people have it.
But I would do all of that, look at their assets,
look at their documents, wills, powers of attorney, healthcare proxies,
and do my own assessment. And I had about a
six or seven page letter that I would craft and
I would send to them. And then I realized, Okay,
I know the law, I know the financial side of this,
I know how Medicaid works, but I'm not an expert
(38:53):
in healthcare. I'm not an expert in the treatments that
they have available in the medical resources and the healthcare
resource is that they have available. So then I had
to go to a care coordinator to do that. So
that in home assessment, and I would walk through the
you know, you open the refrigerator door, is it fresh?
Is it spoiled? Are they eating properly? You go into
(39:15):
the bathroom and you kind of look around and see
what's going on. You look at the rugs, you know,
are they at risk for falls? I was doing that
as a lawyer. That's not what I do. You need
someone to do that assessment, and James talked about that
in the initial call. Nina, you do those assessments, you
go into the home. Just talk a little bit about
what that assessment is and what that family can expect.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Yes, so the home assessment can take as long as
we would like it to take, so it includes a
complete assessment of the home. It completes. I will do
standardized assessments of cognition, balance, ADLs, activities of daily living,
(39:58):
instrumental activities of daily living, safety concerns.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
Balance, fall risk.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
These are all standardized assessments that we can take again
and use them as a baseline, and doctors can use
them and rely on them as guidelines and resources when
we're making referrals.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
So that is part of it. We look at.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
The home, we decide what the family wants, like we
really want to keep Dad on the second floor. Okay,
let's figure that one out. Do we need just two
hand railings, do we need a stairlift?
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Let's look at this.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
And elevator is about one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
An elevator is pretty expensive. So after this full assessment.
We take in a lot of information. You know that
we encourage and almost require family to be there because
we want to make sure that everyone is engaged in
coordinating with us.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
After this assessment is completed.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I will take all of that data, all of your information,
your likes, your dislikes, your music preferences. If mom and
dad haven't been able to play like puzzles or play games,
I'm going to address that because that's important to them
and their quality of life. So you're going to expect
a comprehensive care plan that is going to lay out,
(41:17):
detail by detail, exactly how you reach each of your goals,
every single one of them.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Oh, Sherry, my clients say, well, don't I get that
through my health insurance plan. Don't I get that through
my Medicare plan? Don't I get that through with the state.
Doesn't the Office for Aging come to my house and
do this assessment. You guys are all from the healthcare system.
What's the reality check there?
Speaker 5 (41:42):
So the reality there is, yes, you do get an assessment.
Is it an in depth assessment as Nina just described?
Speaker 1 (41:50):
No?
Speaker 5 (41:51):
And is it the follow through and the plan of
care and the tools and checking in on you did
that option work. So for the volume of individuals in reality,
that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Like health care providers. Your primary care provider gets five
minutes to spend with you, and they may have a
network that they can refer to, but they get twenty
minutes to spend with you. That's their budget and that's
what they get paid for. My experience is that you
need someone in your corner that advocate the healthcare sirpa
that's going to navigate in the home through the facilities,
(42:29):
look at all the options, every option, and it's the
old blind man in the elephant. Depends on what your
perspective is. Are you a hospital, are you a nursing home,
are you a home health agency? You know, they all
have their own perspectives, but the patient's perspective is the
most important. Yes.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
And the other big part is they'll give you a
resource list or a resource directory that's maybe five years old,
maybe one year old, but the number has changed. And
what we're able to do at ever Home Care Advisors
is we have constant relationships with so many of the
(43:07):
agencies and community supports that really can help.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
So we're gonna come back after the last short break
I'm going to talk about a program coming up on
April seventeenth that Diane and I and my partner Frank
Kenny are gonna do your home or the nursing home,
where we're going to really dig into all of these
issues legal, financial and care issues and help our clients plan.
So if you want to join us for that seminar,
stay tuned. We'll be back right after this short break
(43:42):
the exactly Little Beatles intro and we're coming back talking
with Nniker, Sanda Sherry Catapano, and Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski. Took
me a while to get that name right, and they're
from ever Home Care Advisors and this is a business,
a company that helps families and clients stay at home,
(44:03):
stay independent. And I can tell you from my own
experience as a caregiver my mom, my uncle who we
had on Consumer Directed and with Joe Jackson's help, we
were able to put a caer plan together where we
had five people twenty four to seven care for four
or five years, where my uncle was able to stay independent.
He was a brilliant man who's very bright. His back
(44:25):
was broken, couldn't get in an out of a chair,
needed twenty four to seven care. But these women became
part of the fabric of his life for those last
five years and they did a phenomenal job. They all
came to the funeral. He left money to each and
every one of those five in his will. That's how
much they meant to him. And if it's done right,
(44:47):
that's the experience, and that's the experience that you're looking for.
But it doesn't happen by accident. So we're going to
talk about how to plan for this, how to prepare
for this, and it's going to be on April seventeenth.
It's going to be at the Colony Town Line Iry
at one pm and we're going to talk about all
of these topics. Please join us Thursday, April seventeenth, one
pm and you can sign up as always on our
(45:10):
website Puerrolaw dot com, p I E R r O
Law dot com. Go to the events tab and sign
up for April seventeenths Seminar Your Home with the Nursing Home.
We have Bob on the phone. Good morning, Bob, Hi.
Speaker 8 (45:28):
Good morning. Unfortunately missed most of your program, but one
question was that is ever home care advisors? Do they
work in other States.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
So we're going to give a two part answer to that.
They have a network. They're part of a network, and
I'll let Diane talk about that network where there are
counterparts in other states. But they also have a technology
system that is available in those other states as well.
Speaker 6 (45:58):
So Diane, Hi, Bob, thanks for calling in the three
people that are here on this call this show today.
We work primarily regionally in the Capital District, but we
are part of an organization called ALCA, another acronym aging
Life Care Association, and we have friends, co workers, peers, colleagues,
(46:23):
and we're part of a network that is all over
the nation. So if someone needs a care coordinator in
a certain location, we can match you with someone and
those people are all bound by the same ethical guidelines
as part of this organization and offer services that are
very very similar. But beyond that ever, Home Care Advisors
(46:45):
has a sister company called FEVA Links and we work
for that company. I work for that company as well,
and we provide the technology that I referred to before.
You may not have been on the call to hear
about that. But so we have clients. For example, the son, daughter,
family member is the client lives here in the capital district,
(47:09):
but their loved one might be across the state line somewhere.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Else in Florida.
Speaker 6 (47:15):
In Florida, we have technology that we can help connect
you to your loved one with in home device for
the person that needs the care, and then an app,
which is our app called Viva Links, where you're connected
to that in home device and there is a broad
spectrum of services that are available there and different technologies
(47:39):
depending on how much the person needs it. Does go
back to that assessment, so we talk about the remote caregiver.
I mean I was able to help and participate in
my mom's care from forty five miles away, but once
you involve technology, that forty five miles away could have
been four hundred and fifty miles away or a thousand
(48:00):
miles away. So I think we'll start with that initial
phone call, find out what the needs are. So if
the loved one is in another state, we can help
get you set up there. If you're in another state
and your loved one is here, then this team could
be on you know, boots on the ground for that person.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
So great, Bob, if you wanted to call up ever home,
they could help connect you to wherever your.
Speaker 8 (48:24):
Parent is okay, Yes, this is my stepmother and she's
out in Illinois. My brother and sister in law are
kind of, you know, taking care of things. But I thought, well,
if as any way I could help, I certainly would
like to do that.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Well, this enables that Viva links is. It's a revolutionary
app and a revolutionary program. You could have five siblings
if you want them all participating in the care. They
can all be on the app. They can all video
chat mom and dad. They can help manage medications, they
can help manage transportation, calendar schedules, all the things the
app does. And then there's additional technology and Diane was
(49:03):
talking about the sensors, cameras, the other things that can
be layered in so that you can be a remote
caregiver and really control the entire care plan Nina.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
Within a hippocompliance system. Yes, that means your information is protected.
No one else can have access to it unless it's
the people that you designate.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Very good point, Bob, does that answer your question?
Speaker 8 (49:28):
Contact the everhome care advisors and good time to.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Give that phone number out there.
Speaker 6 (49:32):
Here we go eight four four six three three three
eight five two that's eight four four six three three
three eight five two, or you can go on www
dot ever homecare dot com.
Speaker 8 (49:47):
Very good, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Okay, thanks for calling Bob and Dane. You have some
other resources. Thanks Bob for that call. On that website
and it links to the Viva Links website as well,
So the two go hand in hand. As you said,
high touch, because you need the caregivers to there's not
going to be any technology problem program until the robots
(50:09):
are ready for this to take somebody to the bathroom,
give them a shower, do the things that they need
to do. Now. The Jetsons was a very, very way
ahead of its time cartoon and Rosie the robot was
doing this and Elroy was getting telemedicine visits. I use
slides from that show, believe it or not. But every
home and viv Links are here today. And Diane, one
(50:30):
more time, how do they contact you?
Speaker 6 (50:33):
Call eight four four six three three three eight five
two eight four four six three three eight three eight.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Five two, Nini crisandezs Sherry Catapanto, Diane, Michel Gottabiowski. Thank
you for sharing your expertise. If any of you are
just tuning in late and you want to hear the
rest of the show. We are on Spotify. You can
find us on Spotify. The shows will be posted there.
You can go to wgy dot com. They also have
the shows up on their website. And I want to
thank you for taking the time to listen to the
(51:00):
morning to Life Happens Radio. Hope you can join us
next week and we will be back on WGY
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