When the time comes to manage an aging parent’s healthcare needs, it can become an overwhelming task. From handling healthcare decisions to making the ins and outs of daily life easier for them, it’s only natural to need help in the process.
Your parents’ health will be critical in determining the type of care they need and your active role. At Alanté, we offer various services to help you handle your aging parents’ healthcare needs. From providing chronic care management to providing in-home care and palliative care, Alanté is here at every step.
As you begin managing your aging parent’s healthcare needs, we have some tips to help you along the way and information on how Alanté is here to help.
Managing Healthcare for Your Aging Parents
Determine Their Needs
To determine your parent’s healthcare needs, you must first talk with them about what they could use help with. Are they dealing with a chronic condition? Do they need help with their medical appointments and daily medication? Are they in need of more intervention or assistance? These conversations can get you started on the right path to finding the best care for them.
Obtain Access to Private Health Information
To be able to manage your parents’ healthcare, you need to be able to receive information about their health and have access to their records. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects healthcare information and medical records.1 To avoid being limited to what you can find out and what you can do, ask your parents to have you listed on their medical records as someone who can speak with their doctor. You can access their medical records if they fill out a HIPAA-compliant authorization.
Once you have access to this information, it’s a good idea to gather and keep their medical information in one safe place. You’ll want to include information such as:
- Appointments
- Medication
- Healthcare providers
- Diagnosed conditions
- Allergies
- Pharmacies
- Notes from office visits
Be sure this information is always kept up to date, and you know where it is located.
Discuss Advance Directives
While it’s a conversation no one wants to have, discussing your parents’ wishes about their medical decisions is essential. Encourage them to put their wishes in writing by completing advance directives. Asking your parents what their wishes are regarding medical care allows them to explain their wishes for care if they cannot and designates someone to make decisions for them if they can’t.
Discuss having your parents execute a healthcare power of attorney to manage care more efficiently. A healthcare power of attorney is a legal document that allows your parent to give someone the ability to make decisions about their medical care.2 If you are the one who will be managing your aging parent’s healthcare needs, you should be the person listed on this document.
Assess Your Abilities
As the person managing your aging parent’s healthcare needs, you must know your abilities and limitations. If you live far away, daily check-ins will probably not be realistic. You may also have your own health problems that limit what you can do for your parents. Determining all these factors will help you assess how much help you need to care for your aging parents. Whether it is obtaining help in their daily lives or locating long-term care.
Trust Alanté With Your Aging Parent’s Healthcare Needs
When you need help managing your aging parent’s healthcare needs in Scottsdale, AZ, Alanté is here to help. The team at Alanté can help you keep up-to-date patient records and provide telehealth appointments for your aging parents if they have trouble making it to a doctor’s office.
Our care team is also equipped to make at-home care visits, including healthcare screenings and routine medical needs. Our Chronic Care Management may be a good choice if your parent has a chronic health condition. Patients in this program may have been recently released from the hospital and are now home or at an assisted living facility. With Chronic Care Management, they can get the help they need managing various healthcare providers and treatments.
As you work to manage your parent’s healthcare needs, you may find that our remote patient monitoring services will be helpful as they keep track of a patient’s condition using digital biometric technology. For those patients with serious illnesses, we offer palliative care to improve their quality of life.
To learn more about our wide variety of services to help you better manage your aging parent’s healthcare, call Alanté today or contact us online.
Sources:
[1] https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/access/index.html
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hcpa.asp
Dan is Vice President, Marketing of the Alumus family of companies. A Seattle native, he earned his BA in Humanities and Political Science at Evergreen State College. He started his career as a newspaper columnist, eventually transitioning into marketing and tech writing for Microsoft and several other startups. He later launched a successful creative agency focused on branding, digital marketing, and content production in Los Angeles, where he worked for several nursing and behavioral health clients, eventually becoming the National Marketing Director for one of them.
He has taught Vipassana mindfulness meditation and MBSR and spends whatever free time he has with his son snowboarding, hiking, and camping in the mountains.