Geriatric Care Management with Mary Lynn Pannen
Mary Lynn Pannen at Sound Options talks about geriatric care management.
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*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.
Welcome back to the program everyone. I am so excited to have this guest here. She is kind of one of the angels in my life and somebody that helped me throughout not only my caregiving years, but also has been a real mentor to me in the industry. Welcome to the show, Mary Lynn Pannen, who is a president and CEO of Sound Options, and welcome. Thank you, Suzanne. It’s really wonderful to be here. I I know that that was quite a heartfelt story that Joe told us, and so I want to talk a little bit about that. So let me know what you’d like to know first. Well, thank you. You know, I I have to say, you know people like Joe when they share their hearts, and I think that we’ve all listened to that story here and thought think to ourselves, you know what, if this could be us and you are a geriatric care manager, which I always say, if I would have known that somebody like you existed when I was taking care of my parent my world would have been so much easier. I would have saved money and time and energy and all kinds of things that I went around in circles for that somebody like you could have helped us. So why don’t you explain a little bit about being a geriatric care manager? What does that entail? Well, I’ll tell you, but before I go into what that geriatric care manager professional looks like, let me just tell you a little bit what is going on in the whole field of geriatrics. Okay, for as we call it, elder care. More and more families are obviously becoming responsible and they want to help their older adult parents right and because those folks are living longer, the complexity of helping mom and dad just are I think they’re getting more complicated than ever before. There’s longevity, there’s more new medications, there’s better ways to make us live longer, and so I see so many families that are all of a sudden faced with this this responsibility and of course they want to help mom and dad and they don’t know where to go, they don’t know what resources are available, they have no idea what it cost, you know, and so I get call after call from family saying, oh my gosh, help us out. It’s overwhelming. It is totally overwhelming. And so what a geriatric care manager does is usually they’re a registered nurse or their masters, prepared social worker who really work with that family hand in hand, assisting them with how to help Mom and Dad. Sounds very simple, but let me kind of go into a little bit more. That would be great. The professional may start out with talking with the family. So we have we have families that come in and just consult with us to get an idea of what all those options are in elder care, for example, what medications should we or what pharmacy should we go to? What are the housing options that are available? How do I get mom and dad to stop driving from why mom’s when Lan on Medicare? Should I be on right exactly? How do I talk to the doctor? How do I get my mom and dad set up on power of attorney? So there’s so many questions and concerns. So some families want to just consult with us and we come up with the plan in a pretty short time. Other families say no, I need for you to come out and see mom and dad, and so we’ll do we’ll go to the home or wherever the person is living and do an evaluation and then look at the big picture and prioritize our recommendations. You’d be surprised that what I might see as a prioritization, the client doesn’t the right might just want to stay at home, or they may say I’d like to go to this retirement home when they really need assisted care. Correct we guide families through looking at that big picture and then together we set up a plan. Well, and what I love about what a geriatric care manager will do is they’re really the liaison to the whole complicated world of senior care with families. And so as you’re sitting there, like Joe’s there with his mom, he doesn’t know what to do. You know, he where she’s been. She’s been with his sister and then she went back to him and then she’s back with his sister and you know, now it’s like what do you do with your mom if this doesn’t work out? There’s so many things that are confusing and every case is different. It’s not like you’re treating your parent like a just, you know, put them in a you know, you don’t want to fit a square peg in a round hole. You know the whole path somebody like that, that is a geriatric care manager is really going to create a solution that is specific for your parent. Is that correct land exactly. We customize every single plan and everybody is different. You’re absolutely right, where some people might say and be realistic and say, well, I’m going to go into assisted care and others are fighting to stay in the home even if they cannot afford that. So the care manager often is really helps the family with not only recommendations, but we listen to the families and there’s just there’s time that we spend so that they can really get their concerns out on the table. We do a lot of education. If the person does go to the hospital, we’re advocates for that family. So we go in, you know, hand in hand with the family and talk with the doctors, sure, and say have you thought about this or have you thought about that? Just yesterday I have a client who is in a wheelchair and he’s had quite a big stroke and he’s he’s struggling. Also has some cognitive problems. His thinking isn’t quite that good right and I was able to talk to the occupational therapist, because I have the history on this guy, and tell her what has happened prior to her seeing this person and things that may not work so that he’s not spending her time trying to figure this guy out so she can kind of move forward from what I’ve said. And so it’s the care menders can help the healthcare team be more efficient and effective as well. Absolutely. We are talking to Mary Lynn Pannen, who is an RN and CEO and president of Sound Pptions, and Sound Options you cover what area in Puget Sound primarily? We’re primarily from Lindenwood down to Olympia, west of the Cascade. Fabulous, fabulous. And so, Mary Lynn, one of the things that I think is critical about what you’re doing is there’s financial considerations. I know from my mom. I just figured, Oh, that all the assisted living or all retirement living was the same and so I put her in a community that when she ran out of money she didn’t qualified to stay there anymore because they didn’t accept medicate. And so those are some things, obviously questions that you can help families determine. You know, what is the best fit based on their financials? You know financial situation. Is that correct? Absolutely, and we we may not initially need to know that, but we like to get a big picture look at the finances. Sure some some families are lucky enough to have a financial planner and so we work with a financial planners who also don’t really know what the cost of care are, and so together you begin to have a little team that can really help. The other thing that we can do is we can take a look at okay, you might have two or three years worth of money, but what’s going to happen after that? So right can guide them to go to elder law attorneys that figure all that out. When should they go on Medicaid? When should they not go on state assistance, or do they order they have enough money that we can start cutting back on expenses that they already have in order for them to live where they want to live? Right again, it’s very individual and, believe me, I think that we are able to say people a lot of time and hassles in overwhelmingly, yeah, the testimonials that we have gotten of all it been like I, like you said, I wish I would have known you when, but I think that we really do save people time and effort. Now for adult children, I know that we really do reduce the stress to them and get them through actually more crises, because you don’t this elder care situation. Elder Care is not a straight path. Like you said, it’s not cookie cutter to now. So you may have a crisis down the road that you don’t even foresee. Yeah, and and that that’s the thing. I always talk about crossroads. It’s like, if you know what to prepare for, you would do it, but you never know. And the average family, they don’t understand care plans, they don’t understand a lot of medical terms that you, as a train and registered new nurse does. So you can look at a care plan from a doctor in a whole different perspective and help the families really find the best solution for their parent. Right. And we have two principles upon which we act. The first in safety and we need recommendations that provide safety to the older person, sure, the chronically ill adult. And then quality of life. And how do we improve a quality of life for some people? It’s maybe little baby steps. So, right, a person with dementia and they’re not able to talk to you anymore, maybe just suggesting a music program for them really and your and tune with a lot of the new technologies out there and the updates and the world. So that’s really exciting to yes, I could go on and on about care managers and how they can really benefit people in this area and I really thank you for having me on the show. How do we reach you back? How do we reach you? Call one hundred and eight, hundred six, two and eight, seven, six for nine, or SoundOptions.com on our website. Mary Lynn, thank you so much for being on the program today. It’s an honor to have you. You are so welcome. Thank you.
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Originally published April 08, 2017