Chicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence – Since 1991 • eldersChicago's Geriatric Care Manager Center of Excellence

Senior Care in Action: 6 Tips for Preventing Outdoor Falls
It has been a long time since we all first saw the television ad for “Help I’ve fallen and...
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October 1, 2012
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Caregiver or Guardian
As a geriatric care manager, I have the chance to work with all manner of caregivers and the elders...
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December 10, 2010
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In the Caregiver's Words

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It has been a long time since we all first saw the television ad for “Help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Technology has since evolved from a lifeline that a senior would wear around their neck to assure that help was just the push of a button away. Now, caregivers can equip seniors with motion sensors that can tell when a person has fallen and make the call before a button is pressed. Remarkable as these kinds of innovations can be – and there are a host of others – the best way to address the potential for older adults falling is to prevent the fall in the first place. In this first of a three-part series, I am going to first offer a checklist of fall hazards outside the home, and this will be followed by a parallel list for indoors and a final post that is about helping assure that your older adult is in the best physical condition to avoid falls. Starting with the outdoor list:
Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Case Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to ccbishop@creativecasemanagement.com. Learn more about What We Do and how we can help you support your loved one.
In the meantime, we invite you to download the below featured FREE white paper - offering both personal and professional advice for those who care for the elderly or people with special needs. Make sure to come back and visit us for more great FREE resources.

A Caregiver's Guide for Changes & AgingCoping with change can be difficult. It often involves tough decisions and conversations with the person you care for. Discover strategies to help you and your loved one feel more comfortable with transition.Download
I often offer advice on how to help your older loved one with challenging tasks or how to protect your older loved one from outside threats, but once in a while the advice applies to us all. And it’s not about some complicated algorithms that the “bad guys” of the “dark web” may be using to hack users who stumble upon a site. It’s about your password or the password of an older loved one or other confidential information that has become the currency of the Internet. Notice I used the singular form of the word, password, because too many online users still resort to a single go to password for all the applications they may use on their computers or smart phones. #1 Threat. You may have been seeing new requirements for passwords in your more secure sites lately, such as no sequential numbers, a mix of numbers and letters and other characters for a password to qualify. The reason is simple – easy passwords are easy to hack, and some of us have been making it more than easy. The most common password, used by over 2.5 million on-line users in 2020 was “123456.” Seriously, and the second most commonly used password for nearly one million users was “123456789.” Really? #2 Threat. Or if you see a post that promises to give you “pictures you won’t find anywhere else on line.” Or even one of the news sites that promises to tell you if you’re a genius with just 12 questions or will show you what child actors look like now 40 years later. There is a host of different forms of these click bait sites, and they may seem relatively more innocuous, because they are just trying to get you to buy an over-rated facial crème or dog food, etc. #3 Threat. These threats are like Threat #2 on steroids, because they may give hackers access to your most important financial or personal information. Here are the twelve questions you should never answer if asked by an untrusted source or even a “friend:” • Where did you grow up, attend grade school, etc.? • What is your favorite color? • What was your childhood pet’s name? • What was the street you grew up on? • Who is your favorite sports team? • What is your favorite hobby or pastime? • What was your first car? • What is your favorite comfort food? • What was your mother’s name before she married? • Who was your first employer? • What was your favorite musical band? • Who is your best friend? You may be asked more than one of these by an untrusted source, and they may be the final keys that allow internet scammers to unlock your web-based safe – on-line bank account, investment funds, and more. Your parents may have cautioned you about talking to strangers when you were very young…that still holds for advice to your parents now. Charlotte Bishop is a Caregiver Coach, an Aging Life Care Advisor, a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. She also is the co-author of How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia.
If you think being a caregiver to an older loved one is hard--with all the trips to help them do laundry, the meals prepared, the trips to the grocery store, the calls received all hours of the day or night--try doing all of that across town or across the country One of every seven of the more than 44 million caregivers in America is a “distance caregiver.” That’s about six to seven million caregivers. And one in four lives 20 minutes or more away from the loved one in need. “Distance” does not have to be miles and miles away, because the local family member who has a job or has a spouse or has kids…or maybe would like to have a life can be just as challenged as the son or daughter time zones away. Distance caregiving carries its own set of unique stressors tied to the challenges of absence and logistics. But there are ways to make it work and to make it less stressful. There are interpersonal tools that can make the caregiving more effective and easier for the distance caregiver:
- Cultivate legal, financial and health resources close to your loved one
- Plan and coordinate visits from other friends or family members to your loved one
- Empower your care receiver to “own the choices” surrounding their support
- Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Leverage the technology of the 21^st century:
- Schedule a daily, regular time for talking with your care receiver
- Use an app for face-to-face communication
- Install smart devices that allow you to monitor home temperature and locks
- Give your care receiver a wearable monitor for vitals and emergency calls
- Place home cameras for security and to track medication adherence.
Not all tech is easy at first, so give yourself and your loved one a learning curve to become more proficient. Inform local members of their care team about any monitoring that will inform their tasks. In my next installment I’ll offer some tips on how to take a proactive role on the health care team while also keeping your care receiver empowered. If you are one of the 44 million or know someone who is, please stay tuned… Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. She also is the co-author of How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia.
When Medicare is defrauded by crooked providers, pharmacists, or any person posing as an expert who can make a telephone call or door to door solicitation, we all lose. Our tax dollars foot the bills. Anyone keeping an eye out for an elderly loved one knows the usual scams. The challenge is that the crooked folks keep coming up with new ploys to dupe Medicare recipients, and Medicare processes 4.4 million claims each day, all of which must be paid within 30 days. If you are a caregiver to a Medicare beneficiary or you, yourself are “of an age,” here are some of the latest scams.
1. Bait and Switch Okay, the notion of offering something that appears legitimate and of value, but then swapping it for something worth a lot less is not new. The latest scam, however, is new in that it promises a new high-tech osteoarthritis kit that “Medicare will reimburse.” So, the scammers promise state of the art, but they deliver cheap Velcro braces. And they bill Medicare for the high-end goods.
2. No Place Like Home Along the same lines of the bait and switch for arthritis, scammers have been known to deliver health services or other domestic help services to Medicare beneficiaries in their homes. But it is when the scammers turn around and up-bill Medicare for more costly professional services that the taxpayers get taken for a ride.
3. Mental Wealth Still another scam involves mental health services in outpatient settings. Medicare recipients are referred to an outpatient facility that in reality is just a social gathering. Socialization is good for one’s mental health, but the scammers up-charge Medicare for a psychological consultation instead. And as with the other scams, the taxpayers pick up the tab.
Medicare paid nearly one-quarter trillion dollars in 2013-the latest data available, and estimates of fraud range from 10% of this total to as high as 30%, but there are measures we all can take to help address these criminal activities. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recommend: • Know your coverage under Medicare so that you are not duped by scammers. • Guard your Medicare number as closely as you do your social security number. • Beware of any medical service provider who reaches out to you unsolicited. • Ask your personal physician about any and all service or device prescriptions. • Scrutinize your monthly Medicare statements for anything unusual. • Say something if you see something…don’t hesitate to call 1-800-MEDICARE. All of this will help you or an older loved one to not fall victim to scammers, and it will keep the money with the taxpayers instead of the scammers. Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Professional and a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to info@creativecaremanagement.com.

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Senior Care in Action: 6 Tips for Preventing Outdoor Falls

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