What is Care Management? With Stephanie Cameron
Stephanie Cameron, RN, CCM, CAPS and founder of Transitions Care Management, answers the question “What is 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.
And Welcome back to the program everyone. We are here with a brand new guest here on the program. We’re very honored to have a lady by the name of Stephanie Cameron who is a registered nurse and also the CEO of a company called Transit Transitions Care Management and Stephanie, welcome to the program thank you. It’s good to be here. I am so glad here here and you know I talk not only on the air a lot about a care manager, but even in my new book I the first thing I tell people is before you do anything with your parent, if your parents in the hospital, if you’re if you’re starting to see signs where it’s time to make some changes or get some help for your parent, hire a care manager. And I’m so glad you’re here because a lot of people out there don’t know what a care manager does. So I’m glad we’re have going to have talk about that today. Yeah, I am too, and I agree. I hear often people people ask what is a care manager mean, because it presents itself in many, many ways in our community and different skill levels. Right, it does, and so so, in a nutshell, I’m we know at you know what is the just give us a definition of a care manager. Well, a definition of a care manager that I feel is one that you would benefit most from is one with the appropriate education, skills and support that I can provide those care management services. So typically care managers or nurses or social workers. They so they do have that educational background. There is the aging Life Care Association, which is kind of the it’s a governing body and kind of the gold standard right care managers right, and so that care manager is one that can help an older adult navigate their way through the process of using especially when complications arise. Well, and I think one of the things your name transitions care management. It’s really about. Whenever a family is in transition, I think is the first call you should make is to a care manager, because I know for my life when I was taking care of my mom, I didn’t know a care manager existed and I made a lot of bad decisions because I didn’t have all the facts, I wasn’t well connected in all the resources available to me and I probably was penny wise and pound foolish because I didn’t get the right care for her up front. It made it harder on her because she had to move more often because I didn’t move her into the right community for her needs, etc. And I think if there’s one thing I would do different huge in my journey of taking care my mom is a care manager would have eliminated so much not only stress on me but, most importantly, stress on my mom. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And so as care managers we’re not just looking at the situation where it is today. We’re looking at where it’s going to be tomorrow and the next day and a gear from now, not only for the client but for the family. You know, we provide support, as I said, not, you know, for the for the family as well, and you know, you mentioned something very important to you as far as you you providing that role for your mom. You also have the emotional aspect it because it’s your mom and it’s hard to make some of those decisions and could be hard for mom to accept some of those decisions. Can we man the daughter? Amen, don’t tell me what to do. How many of us have heard that? It’s like it’s like, don’t tell me what to do, I’m just fine. Yeah, where we use where as we come in as a care manager and we ask, you know, hey, will you go ahead and do this and they say yes, and of course daughter standing there with a with a jaw droppings. Well, and here you are. Here, here you are, Stephanie, and registered nurse and you know, you have that special background to be able to look at a care plan or look at, you know, any sort of documentation that might be, maybe a release from the hospital, and we’re maybe a social worker might say, well, well, you know, we really need to determine assisted living. One of the things that’s really interesting about what you do is, though, is because you’re a certified aging in place specialist, there’s a lot of ways, I think, that can you know, you can still get home care, maybe in the house, you know, in where they live, and they can stay at home longer, which is amazing. Absolutely, absolutely there as being a sort of fight aging in place specialist allows me to go in and to do that home assessment and see what modifications can be put in place in an in an esthetically pleasing way to it doesn’t look like a nursing home or hostel. You would never know right any cases, and which is so great. Right. And the goal is to recommend these modifications that not only care for the person now but take it their current health conditions and where those conditions are going and and provide those adaptive needs for them that they grow with them. You know, and that’s so important because just because, I mean, I’m in my early s and I think about you know, the next home that I moved to better be a house that I can age appropriately and even if in my S. and there’s a lot of people that are in my age group right now that maybe taking care of parents, that we’re looking at maybe moving our parents in with us in our own on homes. We might be looking at downsizing ourselves. You know, our kids are all grown up and you’re looking at it this great, big, huge house, going what do I need this, all this maintenance and all this things for? But there’s something to do with understanding. You know where you’re going to be for ten you know, ten years from now, and is this house going to going to be there for you and and, you know, serve you and somebody like you that is a cap certification can go in and survey a home. You know, maybe there’s a few little tweaks before you move in. That will make all the difference in the world, you know, for your new residents. Absolutely, absolutely. So tell me some of the things that you look for, like when you’re when you work with a client? What are some of the things that you look for in what respect, in the in this like just like there. Yeah, as far as the patient, if somebody’s going to come see you, it’s like what is the what is the what are the ways that you assess? Oh, Shureans. Yeah, absolutely. So I really look at a very, very broad picture with a lot of details. Uh Huh. So, when it comes to the physical environment, I’m looking at the House, I’m looking at the yard, looking at proximity to services and access to services. For the individuals themselves, I’m requesting their medical records from all of their providers, so I get a really good idea of their healthcare picture all around. Where they are. Are they receiving a appropriate care? Are they following the instructions and guidelines from the care yes, yeah, absolutely. Are they taking their medications appropriately? Are they drinking water? Are they eating appropriately? Are they socially isolated? So we’re really and we’re looking at family dynamics. How many children are participating in care? Do they live close, do they live far away? Do they have healthy relationships? So, yeah, really, it’s so so much that we look at to bring together the full picture and provide a plan. So we are talking to Stephanie Cameron, who is a registered nurse and the CEO of transitions care management here in greater puget sound, and Stephanie, before we move on, tell us a little bit about the area that you cover in greater puget sound. What? Yeah, so I cover all of King County. I cover northern Pierce County and Snow Homish County. I also go over to Silverdale, Bremerton also. You do go into kitsup county as well. I do go into kitsap county. It’s it can be a little more costly for our clients going out there, but sometimes the need is great enough that they will will recurs sure, sure, sure. And so typically when you high when a client hires you, you are saying earlier and I think it’s interesting it’s a little bit more intense. You’re more intensely involved up front. Is that correct? When, yes, first wort start working, yeah, absolutely so. Nobody calls us in a moment of calmness and lack of need. We would love to have people call when they’re just preparing for the time that they need a when that be amazing, right, but it always happens in crisis. And so in a crisis, you know, we’re responding to family emotions, to medical or psychological crisis, and so the first month is usually a flurry of activity and getting to know the person and assessing all of the things that we talked about a little bit earlier and coming up with a plan to help stabilize this person in the family and the living situation. We can do the pretty quickly, typically. H and then and then, you know, probably once you get that person settled, you probably don’t hear much from the family then until there’s another change, which we all saw. You know, know that that’s that’s kind of the continuing journey, right, of senior care, right, right. But actually quite often we stay involved and that’s wonderful. So we have may have that flurry of activity in that first month, uh Huh, but then after that we may see that person once every couple weeks to check in and make sure, because wonderful those doctors appointments, to follow up on the crisis that happen and just check in on a regular basis, you know, to ensure that they’re staying stable to avoid across this because what we want to do is now we want to do crisis prevention rather than crisis. Good Point. Good Point. So you’re going to go into that person’s house and you’re going to see throw rugs on the floor and but they’ll probably be very gracious to pull them up for you. Where don’t you ask me to change my house when you’re going to talk to the daughter? Right, right, exactly exactly. Yeah, throw rugs are my nemesis. Oh, I know, I know, bless their hearts. You know, it’s so funny. My mom had, I will never forget this. She used to have this little doily thing over the back of her toilet in her bathroom and used to crack me up. It’s like, mom, you know, I think we could get that. It’s just too institutional without it. When she was an assisted living I go, mom, you know that could fall, you know, slide off, you know that could be a fall hazard. And they just don’t want to hear anything that we daughters want to say to them. Exactly exactly. There’s that that mother child the optional aspects. Yeah, well, and it’s also family dynamic, because anything that I might say to my siblings I’m not credible. Yeah, you are, yes, which is a great so you’re really a peacemaker and families, aren’t you? We can be absolutely. We had one situation where family relationship had become quite fractured between a father, excuse me, a son, and a mother. Son lived in another state and their phone conversations were him being yelled at by his mom and and berating him and and she was just dealing with a very, very difficult time in her life, at a crisis, and he didn’t know how to respond. So we were able to come in and encourage her to actually call me. Yeah, and sells as good. So we help them kind of get their relationship. So you save that together, which was wonderful. I love those moments. So, Stephanie, how do we reach you? Yes, you can reach me. My telephone number is to zero six two ninety three, three zero seventy. By email, Stephanie at transitions at C M Acom, and that’s your website. I bet to trend. My website AMCOM and my website is transitions care management. Oh, it is okay. Well, see, I didn’t. I didn’t do that right. We just shortened the email to make a little easier for you? And do you have any like special promotions or consultations that you offer people? Yeah, so we do a fifteen minute free phone consultation, so we encourage anybody to call. We’re also available twenty seven. I probably don’t want to call for our consultation at two in the morning. That we also publish a news letter on our website that you can go to every month with a range of articles from text tips for family caregivers to addressing common problems with Alzheimer’s and memory loss. We have eight years worth of archives on there, over three hundred articles. Is Wonderful. Kind of a thank you to our families for being caregivers. Stephanie, thank you so much for being on the program today. We look forward to talking to you again. Sue. Thank you
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Originally published July 15, 2017