Emergency room visits for many older adults are unnecessary because they are not true medical emergencies.  Unnecessary emergency room visits add cost to the already overburdened health care system and drain money from savings and retirement accounts of older adults.  Yet, when older adults don’t feel quite right, 911 is the first number they call.

What are the most common causes of unnecessary emergency room visits?  Urinary tract infections are one of the reasons older adults end up in the emergency room.  Caregivers see their loved one experiencing mental confusion or strange behaviors and have no idea that the diagnoses can be as simple as a urinary tract infection.  Urinary tract infections are extremely common in individuals with memory loss, dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease and can be easily diagnosed and managed with a regular physician visit rather than going to the emergency room.

Other common reasons for unnecessary emergency room visits for older adults include:  dehydration and/or poor nutrition, bacterial pneumonia, high blood pressure, chest pain, asthma, poorly managed diabetes, congestive heart failure, COPD and dementia and associated behaviors.  In 2012, the Medicare co-pay for a hospital admission from the emergency room is $1156.  The co-pay for day 20+ in a skilled nursing home is $144.50 per day.  Older adults and their families are shocked to learn that Medicare doesn’t pay for all types of care including emergency room visits and rehabilitation.

Being admitted to a hospital emergency room and having subsequent treatment is extremely expensive for older adults in more ways than the obvious.  After an emergency room hospitalization or nursing home stay many older adults are less able to continue to live independently and to care for themselves.  Hospitalizations often result in significant cognitive and physical declines for many older adults who also experience delirium.  After a hospitalization many older adults find it necessary to move to assisted living; some remain in nursing homes for the remainder of their lives.

Rather than rushing to the emergency room, it is important for older adults to be proactive in their health care.  Medicare does not pay for care oversight and supervision that may prevent unnecessary hospitalizations and reduce greater out of pocket costs to consumers.  Many older adults are unaware of services that can save money and improve quality of life. This includes regular and ongoing medical appointments with physicians.  Care management and oversight helps older adults avoid emergency room visits and health emergencies and is a service offered by The Care Navigator.  Care management provides oversight and an advocate to ask questions of physicians and to coordinate follow ups for care, avoiding unnecessary emergency room visits.

Many family members miss common signs that loved ones would benefit from care oversight. In addition to the reasons listed above, these signs include weight loss, depression, poor hygiene and a number of other issues.  The Caring Generation educates caregivers about caring for older adult loved ones.

It’s time for older adults and their caregivers to become more educated about options to manage health issues.  This can only happen if education about available services occurs to eliminate hospital stays and the associated risks of not monitoring health conditions.  Informational videos about care options and services are available.

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While visiting with a wife caregiving for her husband, she repeatedly told her husband to sit down, when all he wanted to do was walk circles around the living room and kitchen.  She felt it important to regulate everything her husband ate.  Including not allowing him to have foods he would actually eat like cookies and ice cream, yet she wondered why he was losing weight.  She wanted her husband to read books that he could no longer mentally follow, because previously he read all the time.

In these caregiving situations, control relates more to the wish of a spouse to not lose the person they married.   Even though by this time, the person may be physically present but mentally there is little recognition.  Wanting to maintain control in caregiving situations where memory loss exists is more about the caregiver spouse grieving the loss of a loved one than the needs of the spouse requiring care.  Many times we forget that caregiving is about the person for whom we’re providing care.  Caregiving is not and should not be about the caregiver, although boundaries do need to be set about the type of care we are able and willing to provide.

This is where caregiving education is important.  Many caregivers care for a loved one with memory loss or Alzheimer’s disease and never become educated or attend a support group. Their actions toward their loved one may be seen by educated outsiders as abusive because the caregiver really doesn’t understand that their actions are resulting in behaviors that are more extreme like anxiety, pacing, crying, wringing of hands and other disturbances.

The Caring Generation provides education for caregivers so that relationships, rather than being burdensome or filled with guilt, remind us that life is precious and time on earth short.  There are also many organizations, like The Care Navigator, that provide care coordination and support to caregiving families on a local basis.

Many caregivers I meet ask me how they can learn to become better caregivers. In the past I responded with “have you surfed the internet for information?”  To my surprise caregivers responded yes — BUT they hadn’t found subject matter specific to their needs.  Having difficulty believing this, I did a little internet surfing.  When typing in the words caregiving or caregiver, thousands of entries are listed.  Add the words “education or support” to the words caregiving or caregiver and fewer sites are listed.  The other concern of caregivers is the physical availability to attend conferences, courses or support groups.  Difficult when you are caring for someone that can’t be left alone or when at the day you have no extra energy remaining.

Caregiver Education

Realizing that I may be able to offer a new option, I accepted the challenge of developing an educational website for caregivers with the goal of making it easy for caregivers to access information electronically, any time of day — even if the time of day is 2 a.m.  The new website features two areas: free content and a paid membership area.  When cataloged, this free information will represent over 700 audio segments, including associated text files if you prefer to read rather than listen.  To respond to consumer requests for specific caregiver training, I’ve written segments under the title, The Caring Generation: The Caregiving Roadmap®, and recorded the content on video.  This represents the educational paid portion of the website.  The education is relevant for both family and professional caregivers.  Please share the new Caregiver Education website with professionals and family caregivers.

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If you suspected memory loss in yourself or a loved one, would you seek a diagnosis by having a Memory Loss Screening?  So many of us don’t want to receive bad news about our health or our future.  Others believe that if a loved one has Alzheimer’s disease, why diagnose because there’s nothing that can be done.  In my opinion, not diagnosing is like standing on train tracks waiting to be hit by an oncoming train.  While a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease can’t be changed, there are measures that can be taken to support a loved one and family caregivers if involved.  It’s also extremely important to make plans for health care needs and legal plans for powers of attorney so that when the individual with Alzheimer’s disease can no longer manage on a day to day basis, care and oversight will be available.  Many times professionals are appointed as power of attorney because there is no family or family lives too far away to be effective in managing care.  Whatever your situation, would you rather be prepared or forced to react to a crises each time one occurs?

It is always best to plan ahead when you are able to do so.  Planning for your or your parents future needs to happen sooner rather than later.  When we wait we often find ourselves having to deal with difficult family dynamics and a much higher level of stress and overwhelm than we would if we planned ahead.

Taking a Memory Loss Screening will allow you to get a better picture of what you are  your loved ones future care may involve.  There are many wonderful options now available to us as we age.  More now than ever before.  More is known about aging and how the mind works as we age than ever before.  Research and remedies are being announced on a regular basis so that we can plan better and care better for ourselves and loved ones.

Memory Loss Screening seems to something that could really help families prepare for what may lay ahead for them.  Having a good plan in place will ensure a much happier and joyful transition as we age.

Please leave your comments below.  Have you ever had a

Memory Loss Screening

done?  Would you do it?

Let us know what you thing.
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Learn more about who to care for someone that needs a Memory Loss Screening

Because of the significant need for education about support services for caregivers, The Care Navigator has released a video series educating about issues faced by older adults and their adult children caregivers.  The videos outline available support services.  According to Pamela D. Wilson,  “Many caregivers tell us they’re overwhelmed and that there’s simply too much information to evaluate.  They don’t know how to evaluate information or who to trust for support.”

Focus groups initiated by The Care Navigator tell the story of adult children outright lying to parents about providing care and family disagreements escalating because of opinions rather than factual information about caregiving and available services.  Adult children, having made promises years earlier to care for a parent, find themselves stuck when the need arises and the realities of providing care, giving up employment and moving across country become unrealistic.

 
Learn more about Guardianships in Denver

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The impact of our lifestyles in younger years seriously impacts our health in our later years.  Yet there’s little discussion of what happens when we become overweight and how weight affects our joints, knees and hips.  Little discussion of how eating too much sugar affects our kidneys, circulation and eyesight.  Little discussion of anything that might be unpleasant or heaven forbid take any extra effort.  We want physicians to cure our ills, we don’t want to think about or make any effort to prevent them.

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You  might be surprised to learn that these expressions are more common in caregiving situations than one would expect.  How does a caregiver become cruel?  Usually self neglect, not taking care of themselves, not understanding that being a caregiver is stressful, not asking for help, wanting to be the martyr who provides care.  Cruelty in caregiving occurs because the caregiver hasn’t set boundaries and doesn’t care enough for their loved one (although they never see it this way), to force the issue of having others provide care and support.

The result, the person receiving care is faced with verbal and emotional abuse which only makes the situation worse because they withdraw and the caregiver becomes more angry because they can’t see that their own act of caregiving is damaging to their loved one.  If you’ve become a cruel caregiver it’s time to see support and help.

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