Tag: saving time

Collating the case management information

Collating the information

To progress to the next step, you should have completed the following tasks.

case management from home registered a gmail account
case management from home opened a dropbox
case management from home opened a case management from home file with a sub-file for each family member that you are managing with their date of birth added. 

Now that you have opened your gmail accoun and dropbox parking lot and have entered a file for each family member into your dropbox we can progress to collating the necessary information for case management from home of the medical and educational needs of your family member.

In being the BEST case manager from home with the BEST case management from home system it is mandatory that we consider the true problems as they exist for you and your family and one of these is conservation of resources. These resources are

case management from home case management from home, time, effort, money, funding disabilities case management from home, time, effort, money
MONEY TIME EFFORT

 

Individuals who manage lives with complex medical conditions and disabilities are often supported by large teams of medical and educational professional and support people over long periods of time to enable them to achieve lives of their best capacity. Completeness and accuracy of information is essential to effective management from this group of team who often have to work at a distance from each other but still work together to support the decision over a diagnosis and a health care management plan.

Some of these disabilities and health conditions seen in the health care system include but are not limited to dyspraxia, speech and language impairment, Auditory Processing Disorder, Cerebral Palsy, Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Down Syndrome, Autism, Asperger’s Disorder, Dementia, Parkinson’s Disease, Stroke, Mental illness … to just name some of the more frequently seen disabilities.

Case management from home-disabilities
What is the thorn in the side for families managing disabilities

Lets talk about the thorn in the side of all families supporting individuals with disabilities

The current medical management of some of the complex medical plans is that medicare offers the EPC or Enhanced Primary Care Plan which is a health care plan which is arranged by your General Practitioner to do this for you. In some circumstances, this may support the (often subsidised by you) cost for 5 clinical sessions with a health care professional (eg. a Speech Pathologist, an Occupational Therapist and an Audiologist) shared between these professionals over a calender year!!! Yes, that’s right…you get the partial refund of only 5 sessions between 3 health professionals-but only 5 in a year! In my professional experience, I have never completed the correction of a child with a speech impairment in 5 sessions yet and a majority of my clients are attending for a term, to a year to many years as they become older and need support with their speech and language skills as they are expected to undertake more challenging skills with communication and literacy. This means that the cost of the necessary treatment fell back in their laps.

Oh…I forgot to add…this is if you are actually eligible for the health care plan. So your condition must be complex, last 6 months or more and require 2 or more health providers. Yes, the distribution of the funding to support conditions is miserable given that funding is spent in other areas of our community in such liberal ways. What is even more frustrating for health care professionals and families of people with disabilities is that many conditions  are actually correctable, such as some speech, language and literacy conditions are and make considerable impact on people lives when early intervention and treatment is sought.

Would we need to spend less on the other end with delinquency, drug use, unemployment and homelessness if we supported the individuals better at the earlier stages of their disabilities and educational struggles. SImple answer to this is … yes. How do I know this…20 years of practice I have seen the impact on individuals who get support verses the ones who don’t.

Case management from home, speech therapy, cerebral palsy, disability
Children with Cerebral Palsy gain support with the under 6 years Betterstart package

Currently, there is some funding packages for individuals under 6 years of age with diagnosis of complex and life long disabilities who need significant amounts of support with large professional teams. Autism, Asperger’s Disorder, Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy and Prada Willi fit into this category which is providing some relief for families with the expense of therapy and medical and educational aids. However, it is my professional understanding that the majority of these individuals will also need significant support on a life long basis to function in the community, so will be the beneficiaries of an array of support throughout their entire lives…which is good. This may sometimes involve attendance at groups, educational and employment support, disability housing and care as they grow up and are supporting within the community. This is a start given that there is an extra-ordinary expense for a family to footthe bill of the health care and educational needs of these individuals with disabilities.

Down Sydrome individuals gain financial support with the betterstart package
Individuals with life long complex needs currently have access to government funded packages.
Case management from home
Financial support would be better for people sooner rather than later.

My argument is that the children who have conditions in the middle ground and mild areas who can actually make the most improvement and reach a function of life independence and then be less a burden on the support systems in our community are least supported which I think is crazy and so sad for these individuals…and this opportunity then falls back on the responsibility for the family to provide funding and personal time and energy to support. For example this includes conditions such as speech and language impairment, dyspraxia, auditory processing disorder, phonological processing disorder, dyslexia, dysgraphia…to list a few that pass my professional hands on a day to day basis.

So yes…it is agreed that 5 sessions is not enough-and it is well understood that clients are waiting on long lists for what is deemed FREE government services in the Health care and education department as they are unable to carry the costs of long periods of professional services of multiple health care providers over long periods of time.

Click on the camtasia video below to learn about a method we can use to save money-time-effort by case managing our family member from home. We will be collating the case management from home information into an excel document that has 3 pages.

Page

1

Case management from home, disability, professional team Team Details

Page

2

case management from home, assessment, diagnosis Assessment &Diagnosis

Page

3

Case Management from Home-Treatment & Management

Treatment &

Management

The next step is to save the template sent to you in the last email (CMFH_Team_Details_Jenny Button.xlsx) into your dropbox file under the family member that you are supporting. Save a separate document for each family member as it acts as a summary of all the health care and educational planning that has been undertaken and helps to minimise the wading through of endless papers and draws to find the document you were looking for.

Watch the camtasia video below to have an understanding of the method behind the excel document and how it is fundamental to streamlining and simplifying the paperwork for yourself and your professional team members which in turn gives them more quality time and saves you money in reinventing the wheel. It will also reduce your frustration of having to answer the same questions again and again and having to pay for that luxury. You can later click on the links for each page to be taken to the posts displaying the camtasia for each of these pages and what will be required to fill in these documents.

The little bit of investment in work is worth it over the long run. You will know what I mean when you see the look in your health professionals face when you mention to them that you have forwarded that information to them by email before the session for them to just save into your medical record to use when they need it in the future and to hand them the printed copy when saying it!!!

Yes…you will be the CLASS A CLIENT…and class A clients tend to get class A service from how I see it from this end because it frees up the health professional to not be taxed with the burden of collecting all the details and dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s” and to be able to focus on where their best skills and capabilities can shine…in helping you or your family member doing what they do best!