Tag Archives: home care NJ

Elder Care Skills for Family Caregivers

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Skills Needed for Advocating for your Loved One:

Educate yourself regarding your loved ones illness/and or disability.
Communicate efficiently and succinctly with healthcare professionals.
Recognize you are a healthcare consumer and deserve quality healthcare.
Understand you are an important member of the healthcare team.
Give input and ask questions.
Pick your battles and don’t sweat the small stuff.
Realize that sometimes it is the squeaky wheel which produces results.

We all go through varying stages of emotions when our lives have been transformed by becoming a family caregiver. Research has shown there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. All of these emotions are part of the framework which makes up our learning to adjust and cope to our life as a family caregiver while we watch someone we love struggle with chronic illness.

On occasion some become sufficiently angry and search for ways to deal with their anger by channeling it into a constructive endeavor and caring enough to become activists for a much larger cause. Sometimes we will find the energy and passion not only to advocate for our loved one’s well-being but for all family caregivers.

New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

New Jersey Medicaid Planning for Home Care

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New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

Medicaid Planning 

For New Jersey Seniors preparing for the future and facing the prospect of long-term care with moderate income and assets, you eventually may have to rely on Medicaid to pay part or all of the cost of care.

Medicaid planning, using a qualified elder law attorney, allows you to correct inequities in the system. Medicaid planning has gotten a bad name because some individuals, who would normally have too many assets to ever qualify for Medicaid, deliberately use it, many years in advance, to give away everything to their family so as to qualify for Medicaid. It is wrong to abuse the system in this way and to use taxpayer dollars to insure an inheritance for the family. And if that person is not anticipating immediate care, this strategy is just plain dumb. A list of practitioners who specialize in this area of helping people with Medicaid issues can be found at http://www.longtermcarelink.net/a7medicaidplanning.htm

New Jersey Medicare Fraud

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New Jersey’s Expert Home Care for Elders and Seniors provides care for your aging loved ones since 1984. Please call us when your loved one needs help – 800-848-2336.

Medicare Fraud in New Jersey

Medicare Fraud was a growing problem back in the 1990′s. Exposing those who participate in Medicare fraud in New Jersey was essential to helping to control the problem. In 1990, the Florida Legislature passed a law with an amendment that allowed anyone with a medical degree from outside the United States, who was not licensed as a physician, to become certified as a physician assistant in Florida.

There were 960 foreign medical graduates (FMGs) who took advantage of this opportunity before the Florida Academy of Physician Assistants got an injunction and stopped this major mistake.

In 1994 the Legislature passed a law that would require those FMGs to pass an examination administered by the state similar to the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants examination required to become a nationally certified physician assistant.

Of the 900 or so who took that exam, 60 passed. The remaining lost their privilege to practice medicine in Florida. Of those remaining 60, 15 have been convicted of Medicare fraud, and several more have been convicted of other major medical offenses. They have since lost their privileges. The physician’s assistant in the story was one of the foreign medical graduates and never nationally certified.

Medicare Fraud read story

Home health care safety – NJ

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Many New Jersey seniors are at risk during the summer’s heat and humidity.  Seniors over the age of 65 in four North American cities revealed that while nearly 90 percent of the respondents were aware a heat warning had been issued, only about half of the people did anything about it.  Many thought the warnings were targeting the NJ elderly, and not them.

To make sure that both you and your elder loved one are safe, here are some important tips:

  • Keep a glass of water in every room for quick access.  Drink plenty of fluids, even if you don’t feel thirsty.
  • Dress in light-weight clothing.  Remove all heavy materials, long sleeves and dark colors from closets. 
  • Stay out of the sun during the hottest times of the day.  Sunburn makes heat dissipation more difficult.
  • Take a nap during high heat times or find a good television program or movie to watch.
  • Keep shades down and blinds pulled. 

Most people know that extreme heat can make us sick. But we may think of heat-related illness as something that only affects people who are overdoing it like overheated marathon runners, professional athletes, or new recruits doing drills on military bases.

But most people who die from heat stroke in the U.S. about 400 every year, and possibly more don’t get it from overexerting themselves on a muggy day. In certain people during high temperatures, it’s all too easy to develop heat stroke while sitting perfectly still on the couch.

Heat stroke occurs when the body is unable to regulate its temperature. The body’s temperature rises rapidly, the sweating mechanism fails, and the body is unable to cool down.

Read the full article: Hot Summer Days Can Make Sick People Sicker.

Call Expert Home Care NJ if your elder needs Home Health Care in New Jersey at 800-848-2336.