If you need, someone to provide in-home care for an elder loved one, a recent article by LA Times writer Rosemary McClure highlights the dangers of hiring the wrong person.  

In it, she describes her mother, who has dementia, being left in the caretaker’s hot car for hours at a time, which she found out from a friend who saw this and reported it to her.  As it turns out, the caretaker was visiting her boyfriend on caretaker time, leaving mom in the sweltering car during these “conjugal” visits.

Unfortunately, such bad care-taking happens all too frequently, and not because we who did the hiring, don’t care enough to find someone good.  It’s more like given the time and effort it can take to make sure you have the right person on the job, we can easily become unwittingly careless.  As Ms. McClure puts it quite well: … “many well-meaning and caring adult children are just as lackadaisical as I was when hiring help for their parents.”

Here’s the very good news: Finding quality assistance personnel doesn’t have to be difficult – if you know the right way to look.

• First, use an accredited home health service – you will pay more per hour, but you will get a much higher quality person, and many priceless value added benefits like background checks on workers, fill-in help if your worker calls in sick, and a company you can hold legally accountable.  We’ll have on our website two services that I can recommend. To get you started, I can recommend: eldercarelink.com a national service which connects you to the resources in your community; and in Tampa Bay, Harmony Home Healthcare, at harmonyhh.com or you can call 727-723-7532
• Second, treat this as the job interview it is whether or not you’re using a home care service – have a basic job description developed, and insist on at least 2 references for anyone you’re considering. 
• Finally, look closely at the level and quality of training the person possesses or the agency provides their care personnel.  Untrained may be cheaper, but there’s a reason for that…don’t find out what it is at the expense of your loved one.
  

You have been officially alerted….

Here is what we can – no must - do to make sure our elders get the loving and quality care they deserve from their medical practitioners and facilities.  And, of course, the advice I’m about to give around their care, holds true for us and our own health care as well.

One of our generational characteristics is that we have no problem taking control of situations; in fact, we get cranky when we lose control, or perceive we’re losing control, of the things that impact our lives.  Well, use this characteristic well when it comes to ensuring that the elders in your life are cared for well.  Don’t park it at the doctor’s office door, or before entering the facility in which your parents live.

The other night, ABC Nightly News did a piece on a FL woman – a Boomer - whose 86 yo father was being inappropriately given antipsychotic medications for his dementia by the ALF in which he was living.  Research clearly shows that not only does antipsychotic medication not work to mitigate dementia in the elderly, it actually does them harm.  After being in the facility for only 2 months, and after watching her father quickly descend into despondency to the point of becoming unresponsive, he died.  She knew something “wasn’t right” and now in retrospect “wished she had looked into his care further, asking them what medications they were giving him, etc.”  But she didn’t.  She took a hands-off approach with the facility and the doctors.  It cost her father, who she clearly loved dearly, his life. Oh, and by the way, Medicare paid for all those meds, even though they are aware that such treatments are medically unsound….

I assist my 90 yo mother with her care.  She has advanced Rheumatoid Arthritis which is a very disabling disease.  So what I’m urging you to do is what I do myself.  It is:

First: Be a full partner in care, not a passive consumer: 

Conduct yourself like a professional healthcare coordinator who is responsible for a precise understanding of all aspects of the patient’s care (starting with a crash course on the diagnosed conditions and their treatments – you can get lots of factual information online) – do not blindly accept information or opinions of medical professionals who see hundreds of patients a week and spend very little time with each of them; And if you’re thinking “I don’t have time to do that” –in fact, you do, because your already spending that time reacting to crises created by the ineffectual care being given to your loved one – proactively staying ahead of the curve is a much better use of that time…

Second: Hold your healthcare professionals accountable for quality care: 

Do not accept non-answers, condescension, vague answers, answers in medical jargon, or the attempt made by so many doctors to treat your questions as silly or unnecessary – you would not accept this of any other service provider, and a doctor is no different;

Third: Seek second or even third opinions: 

In fact, seek out the leaders in the specialty associated with your loved one’s diagnosed condition, wherever those health professionals are – do not limit yourself to your geographical area or even your State.  The doctor who saved my father’s life numerous times, when all the doctors here in Tampa had sent him home to die, is located in NYC.  Also remember, this is a business, so do not accept guilt trips, hurt feelings, or any other unprofessional reaction on the part of your doctor – if that happens, find another doctor.

As for facilities, here in FL, oversight of Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Facilities is lax at best, a bad joke at worst.  Even if it’s better in your State, don’t rely on others, whether government entities or facility/medical staff, to “do the right thing” by your elder, or yourself.  That’s up to you…and you alone.

You have been officially alerted…