Care Scout, with Larry Nisenson

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following is a podcast from a qualified senior care provider part on the answers for elders radio show. And Welcome back everyone to answers for elders radio and we are here again. We had to Larry Nice and send, who is the senior vice president and Keith Commercial Officer for Jen worth, including a very important program called Care Scout, caregiver support services, and I am going to talk to our listeners right now and I bet, with a hundred million caregivers out there that every single one of you have been touched by caregiving and it. If you’re working a job out there, you probably can relate to a lot of things that we’ve talked about. But we also know that in comployers need to support their their caregiving employees a little bit better. And so, Larry, you and I are having a wonderful conversation about all the challenges here about caregiving. But one of the things that’s really great about Jen worth is you have amazing solutions and we’re here to talk about that today. So, Larry, welcome back, thank you’s and so happy to be there. Well, we’re glad you’re here too, so tell us a little bit, Larry, about Care Scout and the program that exists for a players to help their employees. That our caregiving, absolutely and it’s super exciting. I I shared with you my own caregiving story and the huge gap that existed and continues to exist is who’s going to provide the guidance? What’s the Road Map? WHO’s helping on the journey caregiving? About twenty years ago a company was started out of Waltham, Massachusetts called Care Scout, and their mission, by the way, is amongst them the best missions I’ve ever heard. And here’s what it is. They want to provide care management support to gear givers and their loved ones in orders for them to make the best informed care decisions period. That’s what they wake up every day to do, and so for twenty years all they have been doing is interacting with millions of caregivers, family caregivers, unpaid caregivers, who say I have to take care of my loved ones. What do I do? And over that twenty year period, Jen worth bought them about ten years ago because we sought of value of what they were doing and we wanted to give this to our long term care policy holders. And then I, when I joined the JEN worth about three years ago and was understanding what the company did and how we did it. And then about a year ago, my team came to me and said we have to bring this service out and put it on the front lawn. We have to make caregiving services available, because here’s what they do. So, and they’ve been doing this for twenty years, when somebody is a caregiver and they don’t know who to go to, the general answer is what that they’re going to google something. Well, that’s fine, but what actualise does your average caregiver has exactly right. Imagine instead. Imagine it’s instead of going to Google, you picked up a phone, you die up an eight hundred number and you were immediately the phone call is answered by a license nurse, social worker or other license clinician who says to you, Suzanne, how can I help you? Tell me what your struggle is today and you describe what your situation is, whether it’s something that’s generic, like I don’t know, my mom looks like she’s losing her memory or she’s sort of slown down physically, or I have to take the keys away from my dad and I don’t know where to start. That’s very general right or maybe it’s the call that I needed to make, which is my father’s paralyzed and I need to find a facility that specializes in brain tumor treatment and they have to have a bed available. Right and no, by the way, here’s what his insurance is and I need to move them in on Tuesday. So can you find me a place? With one phone call, you talk to again, a license conisition, with one phone call, they take all of the information and they say to you, okay, we’re going to go to work. We have a network that has thirty thirty in all fifty states. We have a network of over a hundred thousand professionals that are nurses, clinicians, facilities, contractors, every aspect of the caregivers dilemma. We have this woe a network and our clinicians will go and do all of the leg work, all of the sourcing. They’ll say to you, they come back and say, Hey, look, you needed a facility that can take care of your dad. Here are the four facilities that have availability in your area. Here’s the custom report for you on all four of those facilities. That talk about ratio, that talk about the state licenses, that talk about what they’re greate is they literally do all of the work for you. On average, they spend between seven and ten hours of research and their experts. Imagine if they were just googling like the emergent caregiver is going to do right, it’s probably twenty I work that they sit right and and in doing that work for the caregiver, we then come back and say here is several choices. We then help you do interviews. If, let’s say, you’re interviewing because you need somebody to come into your home right you need somebody to come give five or ten hours of care for a loved one, we help you have the interview with those potential caregivers and and we negotiate the pricing for you, because we’ve been doing this for so long we know what things call. If you say I only had I can only pay twenty an hour, we find you somebody inside of that price range or life. All of that gets done, Suzanne, with simply the employee making one phone call and then we go to work and do all of the leg work for you. It really is that service and that’s that’s a powerful service for especially employers to be able to have this to support their own place and we’re talking about morale, we’re talking about a lot of being more efficient and also it helps the management understand a little bit more. I think one of my challenges when I was in the workplace, you know, twelve years ago, was the fact that my seem, you know, my management, they were certainly uninformed at the time about family caregiving and the role in the burden that was placed on me and, of course, everything in my life when, you know, I felt I when you’re talking about this. I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders and I was all alone in it. And I know that that is such a common theme. That to have a resource that you could pick up the phone and you can call and and even just help think things through is powerful and certainly a wonderful service for people and for employers to offer their employees. For sure it really is. And when we talk to employers about it, what we say in them is your employees. First of all, we know that family caregivers are incredibly dedicated employees, that empathy that they bring to their loved ones is the same empathy and dedication that they bring to the job. So this isn’t just some replaceable employee. This is somebody who, in generally, cares deeply about their coworkers, their job and what they do right. So employers know that these are folks they want to help out, and what we say them is, imagine if we spend seven hours doing this. What we know about family caregivers is if they had to do this on their own time, that means they’re giving up nights, they’re giving up weekends, they’re giving up vacation. So You’r you think you’re giving your employees time to recharge their batteries and when you’re not helping family caregivers, the time that they take off from work is not recharging their batteries, it’s taking care of their loved ones. So it really is adding to your employees and and a company is much better served by providing their employees with caregiving services. The last statistic I’m going to give you probably I’m not guaranteeing, but the last one is a startling statistic. We know that that caregivers this added stress leads to many, many, many health problems. Well, we were able to quantify through one of our studies that general sponsored called beyond dollars. We were able to quantify the cost of what that extra healthcare is for employers on average the US economy right, the companies in the US spending over they spend over thirteen billion dollars more on healthcare because of the caregiving stress. So wouldn’t they be better served having healthier employees by putting in a caregiver services program that’s what we’ve created, that’s what we’re talking about and we’ve had some really great results with it so far. Well, and you know what you’re saying, is that taking away that stress factor to the degree you’re going to have less long term problems as well, just through situations like that. And so those are all considerations as well. It sure is. And so in a postcovid world, I’m going to tell you just one other aspect of what this service provides. In a postcovid world. In addition to the elder answer website that I mentioned, and in that website I mentioned earlier, it has over a hundred thousand articles and and conversation starters that are aimed at caregiver. So here is this website that’s shock full its robust information. Then we have this eight hundred number that I just mentioned. But in addition, in a postcovid world, we also will put eyes on your loved one. So one of the other services. This all comes for free to be employee. By the way. We charge the company a few dollars a month per employee, and then for the employee themselves, they pay nothing. We will putnition in front of your loved one. So imagine in a place where you say I don’t know what’s going on with my mother. I’m providing care but I can’t explain what’s going on with her. We will send a license social worker or a nurse out to her house, the assisted living facility, wherever she is, and they’ll spend an hour to an hour and a half assessing your loved one. So so you don’t have to and we’ll come back again with a custom report that says, Hey, here’s what we noticed about your mom. She seems fine mentally. We did notice, by the way, because this is what we do for living right, we happen to notice it to tripping it. There were two tripping hazards. You should take away that rug. Maybe there’s a piece of sharp for him. Will advise you to move away. So you get that extra service. You get an expire from and all of this comes, again, at no cost to the employee. Ever, there’s no upsell. This is all paid for by the employer. So if now, if you’re listeners, if you’re listeners are interested, they can go to care scoutcom benefit and they can see a short video on the Care Scout Support Program that we just talked through, including a way to start the conversation with your employer or, if you’d like us to do that, we’re happy to have a conversation for for your your caregivers as well. Well. We are very, very just honored that you shared this information with us on the show today and, Larry, I hope that our listeners will definitely reach out to you guys because again, done with has done some amazing things in pioneering family caregiving and we are so honored to have you on the show. So thank you so much for being with as this hour. It was my pleasure Susan and it flew by. Oh my gosh, it was such a pleasure to talk with you and I’ll look forward to continuing the conversation and hearing from some of your listeners well. We’re looking forward to it as well and to each and every one of you listeners out there. As we enter this next month of August, a lot of challenges with code but nineteen. So please wear a mask, stay safe and also touch the heart of the senior in your life, whether it’s a phone call, whether it’s just to reach out to say that I care about you. There’s different ways to do so. We need to get creative. So until next week, everyone, be good to each other. Answers for elders radio show with Susan Newman hopes you found this podcast useful in your journey of navigating senior care. Check out more podcast like this to help you find qualified senior care experts and areas of financial, legal, health and wellness and living options. Learn about our radio show, receive our monthly newsletter, receive promotional discounts and meet our experts by clicking on the banner to join the Senior Advocate Network at answers for elders RADIOCOM. Now there is one place to find the answers for elders