Caregiver Hints

I found this little tidbit just in time

National Family Caregivers Month is organized each year by the National Family Caregivers Association and is designated as a time every year to thank, support, educate and empower family caregivers.

“This year we are encouraging people to speak up during National Family Caregivers Month.” said Suzanne Mintz, NFCA president and co-founder. “One of the most important attributes on being an advocate for your loved one is the willingness and the ability to speak up and keep your eye on the ultimate goal, protecting not only the health and safety of your loved ones but for yourself as well.”

Be sure to use this time to make an extra special effort to encourage a caregiver you know. It’s a difficult job and getting a “thank you” or acknowledgement frequently can help a caregiver through that particularly tough day, but use this month to do something a little extra special.

Respond in the comments with any particularly good ideas you come up with and would like to share or let us know what YOU did for the caregiver in your life that is helping you to taking care of a friend or family member, or is taking care of his/her own loved ones.

And if you are a caregiver, take extra time to do something for yourself. The holidays are just around the corner and you might not get another chance for a while.

One lesson I learned the hard way, was that you need to stay up to date with all the official mail you get. Once you start managing the funds, insurance, and health care of someone, you can expect your inflow of mail to at least quadruple, not counting the junk mail you will receive.

What I found out is that the envelopes that contain checks for overpayments or refunds from insurance, look exactly like the ones that contain the standard statement of services. So, while you may be tempted to let some of these go unopened, you are much better off opening everything that you receive right away, and taking a quick glance at it to confirm what it is. Then if you have to put off dealing with it, at least you will know where you stand.

Tags: organization, mail, insurance

In a previous post I mentioned the importance of recording details such a doctors’ contact info, medications, insurance information, among other data in a notebook that could be referenced. If you are doing a lot of the communication such as bill paying and arranging appointments, it can be really helpful to keep ongoing details about who you talked to and what happened, or what was said. This was incredibly important when I was taking care of my Mom’s finances, appointments, and assets. If I had not documented these interactions and discussions, I would have easily lost track of who said what, and whether I was waiting for additional information. I think the most trouble I had was with bills. Since I would frequently have to get people to resubmit charges to Medicare or insurance, or call the insurance companies to see what was happening, I would occasionally loose track of what bills I should be paying, and which were waiting for resubmission. The problem is that the accounting departments just keep sending invoices regardless of whether they are waiting for payment from elsewhere. Unless you take notes and stay on top of it, it is really hard to be sure what you really owe, and to whom. Naturally, you are entitled to get a refund if you AND the insurance company pay for the same thing, but that can get even messier.

The simplest way to take notes is just to use a small notebook. I preferred a size around 5 in. by 8 in. Small enough to easy pack or carry, but big enough to hold a lot of quick notes. This was also good for taking notes at the doctor’s office when I went with my Mother. Since my Mom would have trouble remembering the details of her doctor visits, it was best for me to take the time to go with her and find out from the doctor what was going on. Further discussion of this will be carried over into another posting.

In addition to the notebook, I used a computer program to track bill payments and phone calls. Sometimes I would transcribe information form the notebook into the program for later reference. Since I use a Macintosh computer, i used the program Circus Ponies Notebook. This program is great because it allows to to enter and import all kinds of data, create checklists, and best of all it automatically creates a set of index pages for your information for quick look-up. I am searching for a similar program that runs on Windows to recommend to PC users. When I do I’ll update this post. It has lots of other nice features which you can read about on their website. I am hoping to create a Notebook template to use with the program that will help get you started organizing your data. It will be available for download sometime in the future.