By Jane Gross
During one especially dicey period with my mother, then in an assisted living facility, my brother and I hired a geriatric care manager, first for a consultation and then for additional help at an hourly rate. It felt like such an extravagance, given that we weren’t rolling in money, but the care manager helped solve a series of complex problems that I doubt I’d have solved by myself, mostly involving brokering a compromise with the facility, whose management wouldn’t let me hire a private aide for my mom but could not provide what she needed.
Relations had soured to the point that all I could do was scream at them, which was making a bad situation worse, so having an advocate was a blessing. Also, the care manager, who visited regularly with my mother, often was privy to concerns she was keeping from me, and she was always there for me by telephone, which was a lifesaver.
Many of you have asked questions about geriatric care management and how it is performed. I posed some of them to Patricia Mulvey, a care manager who has worked in hospitals, nursing homes, home-care agencies, hospice and bereavement programs, and as an independent contractor. Currently she is the director of the private geriatric care management service at the Jewish Home Lifecare System, which runs several long-term care facilities in New York City and its suburbs. With some modest editing, here are her thoughts.
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/why-hire-a-geriatric-care-manager/
