Subject: The elder generation is easily left out of the communication cycle.
Summary: genusConnect is helping to change the isolation periods of seniors from weeks and months to days. genusConnect’s gentle reminders about the value and power of conversations and visits help to increase interaction. With its last-in-touch contact system, caregivers can balance communication and share valued observations that help lead to better in-home living. The result is peace of mind for all involved.
Subject: How Music Helps Improve Quality of Life for Dementia Patients
Summary: Learn how family members and caregivers can use music to improve the quality of life for those they love and strengthen the care circle.
A recent study of a voluntary program from Intermountain Healthcare has shown that engaged family caregivers lead to a 65% reduction in avoidable 30-day hospital readmissions. The program, called Partners in Healing, engaged family members during the hospitalization of a loved one, providing education on basic care tasks and checklists of what to do after discharge.
“The vast majority of families like to have something to do and they like to participate in patient care. They’re often the most motivated member of the care team,” says Van De Graaff. “We’ve found that families not only want to promote healing, but patients benefit from someone who knows their preferences, and the result is, the rate of readmissions is reduced after patients are discharged from the hospital.”
The methods and outcomes of this study underscore the importance of a platform such as genusConnect in scaling methods for increasing education, training, and engagement beyond high-touch pilots.
Last week, Congress passed and President Trump signed the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Support Act. The bipartisan act, which was supported by the AARP, elevates caregiving to a national priority and will create an advisory committee dedicated to creating a national strategy for supporting caregivers and organizing resources. This is important on two fronts. First, it underscores the importance of coordinating care resources and working across industries and health sectors to solve a snowballing threat to our nation and economy. Second, it bolsters the state-level CARE Act, passed into law in 36 states so far, requiring hospitals to identify and educate caregivers for patients in need.
The challenge facing the success of both the RAISE and CARE Acts is that there is no system in place for easily managing caregiver resources or coordinating health records, communications, and care plans in one place as patients move across the system. That is what genusConnect is committed to solving, and from our collaborations with hospitals, home care companies, community groups, and foundations, it looks like we are on the right path!
Read more here:
genusConnect was designed on the belief that care is more than medical, and that only by engaging the four core needs of care, mental, physical, emotional, financial, can you have a positive impact on a patient (and caregiver’s) quality of life, health, and well being. That belief is being backed up by a recently published study in Nature titled “Impact of remote patient monitoring on clinical outcomes: an updated meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials” that lays out an important finding: remote patient monitoring alone does not have a statistically significant impact on health outcomes. The study, which examined 27 high quality randomized studies on patient monitoring outcomes over the past decade, concludes that a successful approach “might combine the most successful elements of the effective interventions in this review, including personalized coaching and feedback, in a more cost-effective manner.”
We could not agree more. With genusConnect, each point of contact, each emotional and physical observation, becomes an opportunity to collect meaningful behavioral and health data which can be used to spot trends before they start, and make meaningful interventions. Furthermore, by engaging the entire care network, as research suggests, genusConnect can have a positive impact on both unnecessary readmissions and extend a patient’s ability to stay healthy in their own home.
Read more at:
Recent research from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has shown that engaged family caregivers lower patient readmission rates by up to 25%. This is big news for hospitals, who are under pressure to lower readmission rates through recently enacted readmission penalties from the Center For Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). With the average cost of a readmission for seniors nearing $14,000 for hospitals, reducing these costs will be critical as healthcare economics change. Further driving this trend is the CARE Act, enacted in 2017 requiring hospitals to identify and educated caregivers for patients in need.
genusConnect is an important tool in addressing this challenge, allowing hospitals to efficiently engage and educate caregivers, helping them navigate the long journey of caregiving, driving better patient outcomes, making caregiving easier, and increasing quality of life.
https://patientengagementhit.com/news/family-caregiver-engagement-cuts-hospital-readmissions-by-25
We often hear people talk about relying on God’s strength through the difficult times. But what does that look like? How do we find strength for the long haul, especially when we are so tired?
We can learn from the ways Jesus handled His own caregiving responsibilities while on Earth.
I am sure if you think and pray upon it, you will find many examples from Jesus’ life that model for us the attributes that can make our caregiving more rewarding and fulfilling. But even if we just focus on the above points, we can grow closer to our Lord as we do the work of being His hands and feet for our loved ones.
Look to Jesus as your ultimate model of a healthy caregiver (emotionally and spiritually), and follow His example in your own caregiving work. Obviously prayer is an important part of this, as many of his techniques involved prayer. If you are at a loss for prayer, don’t worry. God already gave us one; The Lord’s Prayer. Don’t forget to ask others to pray for you and your family as you navigate this difficult time of life. I know when I have had my greatest pain and hardships, I could actually feel the prayers of others when I felt too lost to pray myself.
Jesus faced each crisis with calm assurance because He had placed His confidence in God. We need to ask ourselves if we are keeping God’s promises forefront in our mind; which can be difficult to do when overwhelmed with your own life, plus taking care of someone. How can I switch over to this calm assurance? For myself, I leave post it notes on the mirror in my bathroom. Little inspirational sayings or bible verses. Goodness knows that my mind is so busy thinking of what I have to do next, that these positive thoughts might never enter my brain if I don’t have some sort of reminder. The same goes for the eternal perspective. Reminders and prayers definitely help.
Yes, Jesus delegated. You can too! Using the Genus™ app, you can create a care circle of friends and family to provide respite care or perhaps a meal. If your church is involved with using Genus™, then maybe you can enlist help there as well. Don’t feel you shouldn’t ask for help. Jesus asked for help. Remember that you are providing an opportunity for others to be blessed by being His hands and feet for your loved one. Being a martyr and trying to do it all yourself doesn’t honor God or your loved one.
Jesus did all these things and more. We can use him as our Givers of Care Role Model. He wants to help. All we have to do is ask!