The Weil Perspective
“Bank of Hours” GCM Model Offers Employees Greater Choice and Flexibility
By James Weil, Managing Director – Successful Aging

It’s impossible to deny the importance of family caregiving in this country. The U.S. General Accounting Office says that family members provide approximately 80 percent of all home care services. Yet, the statistics in the box above make one thing abundantly clear: family caregiving puts a significant strain on your employees and their productivity.

So, what can you do to protect your organization from the negative effects of caregiver strain? A valuable first step is to provide employees with work/life programs, flexible work arrangements and access to support groups or counseling assistance. These types of benefits help employees manage their tasks and their emotions more effectively. They also help to protect your people from “caregiver burnout,” a problem that can also affect their job performance and health. However, flextime and counseling services often don’t go far enough for many employees. Their loved ones’ needs are too complex or they require more attention than employees can give. In these cases, Geriatric Care Management (GCM) programs are an ideal solution.

LifeCare’s GCM program, for example, offers employees counseling and education services but goes a step beyond by arranging for a qualified geriatric care manager (a professional nurse or social worker trained in assessment, care planning, and care management of older adults) to actually visit with elders, assess their health and ongoing needs firsthand, and then create customized care plans. By providing comprehensive services and personalized care, GCM programs benefit everyone: elders receive better care, caregivers make more informed decisions and worry less about their loved ones, and employers get more focused and productive workers.

At LifeCare, we’ve delivered two basic types of GCM programs. The first type provides an in-home assessment and customized care plan, and it was designed primarily for people who suspect that their loved ones might require assistance with daily activities (eating, cleaning, toileting, etc.) or might need to be moved to an assisted living facility. The second type of program provides one-on-one meetings with geriatric care managers at the employee’s work location. This type of program was designed for busy employees who need professional counseling or guidance regarding their loved ones’ needs.

Over the course of the past year, I spoke with a number of clients about these GCM programs and about the evolving needs of their employees. Several clients expressed interest in helping their employees better manage other aspects of elder care—evaluating long-term care facilities, coordinating ongoing medical services, bill paying, etc. As a result, LifeCare has developed a third type of GCM program, which we refer to as a “bank of hours” program.

This program provides maximum flexibility and greater freedom of choice by giving employees a specific number of hours (determined by their employers) to apply to a variety of elder care services. These services include:

	In-home assessments—A geriatric care manager provides a thorough evaluation and assessment of the elder’s home and daily living activities, and then delivers a detailed care plan.
	Facility reviews—A GCM tours a selected care facility to evaluate the environment, care, staffing, and overall level of quality.
	Post-hospitalization assessments—A GCM visits the elder before she/he is discharged from the hospital. The GCM evaluates the elder’s condition, future needs and, in many cases, provides an evaluation of the home or facility where the elder will be going.
	Ongoing care coordination—A GCM provides a variety of services and assistance to elders based on their specific needs. These services include coordination of medical services, bill paying, appointment coordination, setting up community services, and the like.

By giving employees this level of choice and flexibility, we’re respecting the fact that their needs—and the needs of their loved ones—are unique. We’re also giving them greater control of their situation. If they know that a loved one needs to be put into an assisted living facility, for example, they can skip the in-home assessment and use their entire bank of hours on facility reviews and ongoing care coordination.

As more and more of your employees assume caregiving responsibilities in the months and years ahead, programs like these will become increasingly important. After all, the more support you give them, the more they’ll be able to support you.