Coffee with Jon: Caregiver Success: Recent Episodes
Jonathan Schober
Inspiring conversations with Family and Professional Caregivers to support the healthcare needs of our aging population
https://youtu.be/o5KI72lG3pA
It’s a noisy market in Healthcare Technology. How can innovative healthcare companies connect with their key stakeholders?
Often times, clinicians can become disconnected from the real people that there work is helping. As healthcare leaders how do we make sure the we, ourselves, and those we lead stay connected, on a human level, with the people we are helping?
Today, we’re going to show how you can unleash the potential of using Digital Strategies in connecting with your healthcare audience.
We’re having coffee with Christine Jacob. She brings more than 17 years of experience in Fortune 500 organizations leading global, regional and local roles focused on Digital. She is the founder of Digi-Bridges where she aims to help her customers adopt creative and innovative user engagement strategies, successfully connecting with their key stakeholders to create relevant and sustainable digital health solutions.
Learn More about Christine Jacobs Visit her website at https://digi-bridges.com/ Building Digital Bridges to Connect you to your Healthcare Audiences
Digi-Bridges helps unleash the potential of using Digital Strategies in advancing healthcare. Its aim is to help in adopting innovative user engagement strategies and research, to create relevant and sustainable digital health solutions.
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The State of Virtual Care: How are major healthcare providers creating the creating the future of integrated healthcare?
We’re going to discuss how one of the largest healthcare providers in the country is delivering a frictionless patient experience by integrating access and navigation centers, care management and virtual care with technology across the continuum of care.
Today we’re having coffee with Craig Cordola.
Craig joined Ascension Texas in September 2017 as President and Chief Executive Officer for Ascension Seton in Austin and Ascension Providence in Waco. He’s also Senior Vice President for Ascension Health.
Ascension Seton and Ascension Providence make up one of the largest health systems in Central Texas with more than 2,000 affiliated physicians, 12,000 associates, 150 sites of care, including 12 acute care hospitals and a wholly-owned health plan with over 250,000 covered lives. This includes the top children’s hospital in Central Texas, Dell Children’s Medical Center, and Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas, Austin’s only Level 1 Trauma hospital. Craig oversees the strategic direction and operational leadership of this $2.3 billion health system. In addition to his responsibilities in Texas, Craig oversees Ascension Living, Ascension’s senior living and long-term care communities across the nation, and Ascension at Home, which delivers compassionate, personalized care to patients at home.
Download the State of Virutal Care
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Imagine standing around in the middle of a huge cemetery. As you look around, what do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel?
Rows of tombstones, a sea of names? Dates inscribed long ago?
For Mike O’Krent, he sees thousands of stories never told, wisdom and life blessings never shared.
Our loved ones, have life stories that need to be preserved and shared. But how do we do this?
Today, we’re having coffee Mike O’Krent.
Mike is the author of the book, “A Conversation You’ll Never Forget: A guide to capturing a life story.” He is passionate about making sure that our loved one’s stories never die.
Learn More about Mike O’Krent Visit his website at https://www.lifestoriesalive.com/ We produce living stories for families, nonprofits and businesses. A living story is a sensory story. That’s why we use video to capture unique sights, vocal expressions and familiar gestures. We interview your story originator, either the family member or founder, then integrate artifacts and deliver a documentary film.
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Our families deserve convenient access to affordable, high quality and customer-oriented healthcare.
We all deserve better healthcare and the opportunity to achieve better health.
Despite all the technology, cutting edge research, expertise, well-intentioned effort, and other resources we put into our healthcare system, we all continue to experience healthcare outcomes that fall far short of what we would like to believe;
But, we have the ability – right now – to unleash the tremendous value that’s currently locked up in our current healthcare system, and deliver the type of healthcare we all want, expect, and deserve.
If you want to be the disruptor rather than the disrupted, and wish to thrive in the emerging community-oriented, customer-centric, value-based healthcare market.
Then you will want to learn how we can reframe Healthcare.
Dr. Neuwirth is a physician executive and a nationally recognized thought leader in healthcare consumerism, patient-centered care redesign and value-based population health.
He is the author of Reframing Healthcare: A Roadmap for Creating Disruptive Change.
Learn More about Dr. Neuwirth Visit the website at https://www.reframehealthcare.org/ The problems in healthcare delivery impact the quality, safety and outcomes of care in ways that are disturbing. The consumer experience lags years behind other industries. And the impact of healthcare costs, which continue to rise, are devastating to individuals, families, municipalities and our country’s economic sustainability.
Over the past few years I’ve arrived at three major realizations:
- We will not solve the healthcare dilemma with our current orientation
There must be a complete shift in our orientation – a ‘Reframing’ of healthcare – not simply an incremental reengineering of the system. 2. We need a market-compatible transformative mindset
The mindset that every other industry has adopted is a customer-oriented consumer-centric mindset. The new entrants into healthcare have this mindset, in spades. If we are to remain relevant, competitive and viable, we also must adopt this mindset. 3. We need a reliable and replicable Roadmap
We need a comprehensive, effective & scale-able roadmap to deliver us out of the dilemma. Single ‘silver bullet’ solutions such as payment reform, pricing transparency or enabling digital technologies alone, will definitely not do it.
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As a family caregiver, you really are doing the Lord’s work. In many ways, you’ve stopped your whole world, perhaps moved to a new city so you can devote all of your resources caring for a loved one.
But what happens when it’s over?
Hopefully, they’ve recovered, but possibly, they’ve passed away. Your work as a family caregiver is finished, and you may now feel empty and lost.
Today, we’re going to talk about that transition
Learn More about Dan Miller Visit his website at 48Days.com The mission of 48 Days is to foster the process of imagining, dreaming and introspection, to help people find their calling and true path, and to translate that into meaningful, purposeful and profitable daily work… all within 48 Days!
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Massaratis…
This is a podcast for Family Caregivers, Academic Researchers, Healthcare Technology Innovators, Professional Caregivers, Social Workers, and Massaratis
That’s right, I said, Massarratis…and Ferrarri’s
Every race car driver needs a pit crew…a support team that helps them win the race.
If you’re working in Healthcare, especially as a family caregiver, you probably feel like you are just trying to survive the next lap.
You need a pit crew…
But how do you identify your pit crew? How do you help them help you?
On this episode, we are going to help you find your pit crew!
Learn More about Glenna Visit her website at https://glennacrooks.com/ This latest venture is designed to help individuals, families and businesses address the overload and overwhelm in today’s complicated, fast-paced world. It is also designed to help those launching new ventures succeed. It does that by helping people understand and better manage the eight key networks of people supporting them. Our tools and services impact health, happiness, and economic security.
The Network Sage: Realize Your Network Superpower
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Currently, in much of society, we have a mental model or meme of “aging and disability” as a defecit model…what you can’t do. With the rapid developments in technology, especially around AI and Robotics, this model is changing.
Today, we’re having coffee with Dr. Deborah Vollmer Dahlke. Deborah is both an Academic Researcher and entreprneuer.
As an entrepenuer, she co-founded Zilliant, a successful enterprise pricing optimization software company, and led the firm in raising over $14 million in venture capitalization.
Deborah is a Director with the Texas Life Science Foundation, and a leader in helping to develop Texas’ biotech ecosystem.
On this episode, we are going to have a conversation about Robots, AI, adn Innovative Tech…and how these are creating new recipes for aiding and expanding Quality of Life for Older Adults.
Learn More about Dr. Deborah Vollmer Dahlke Visit the Texas Life Science Foundation at http://www.tlsfoundation.org/ The Texas Life Science Foundation (TLSF) is a 501c (3) nonprofit foundation founded by the Texas Healthcare and Bioscience Institute (www.THBI.com) in 1997, to serve as a base for its nonprofit programs and research in biosciences and education. TLSF works with healthcare advocacy groups, government, Texas’s academic medical institutions, and the bioscience industry to design, develop, and deliver programs in education and patient and public services to serve Texas’ citizens and communities.
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It’s never a good thing when you need to get a hold of your doctor, and it’s always difficult. Even during an in-person visit, you only have a few minutes to speak with the doctor, and what happens if you think of “one last question” you wish you had asked as soon as you get home?
HIPAA and other regulations certainly don’t help either. You can’t just send a quick text or email to your doctor…Or can you?
Today, we’re going to be talking about the “WhatApp of Healthcare.” This technology provides a HIPAA Compliant framework of technology that simplifies healthcare and empowers patients to easily communicate with their doctors.
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about BHAGs: Big Hairy Audacious Goals.
Our guest today is Clint Phillips, founder of Medici and his BHAG is “To be the world’s most inspiring & innovative healthcare company. 1 million doctors helping 1 billion patients.”
His vision is to create technology that would revolutionize the way doctors provide care to their patients.
And as a serial entrepreneur with a track record of success, Clint just may realize his vision.
Learn more about Medici and Clint Visit their website at Medici.md Doctors Are Overloaded Doctors are bogged down. They are buried with regulatory requirements, administrative hurdles and downward pressure on their own costs to run their practices. This burden is increasingly taking time away from doctors’ ability to focus on what really matters: providing great care for patients. These pressures take away from doctors’ work-life balance, too. More than half of doctors say they regret going to medical school and wouldn’t do it over again if they had to. While average salaries have increased for specialty doctors in the US over time, incomes have remained flat for most doctors in family practice, dermatology, pediatrics, cardiology and oncology.
Patients also face a growing burden, carrying more of their own healthcare costs and spending an average of 121 minutes on each medical office visit they have. Out of necessity, they want more convenience and alternatives to care that save them time and money.
We Believe It’s Time for a Change Medici is focused on the future of healthcare for doctors and patients. We offer a simple, effortless and convenient communication tool that allows doctors to unchain themselves from their medical offices while still taking great care of patients.
Gone is the need for low-value office visits to recoup costs or complex hardware integrations to build a virtual practice. Medici is built for doctors and focused on being effortless by using technology to streamline and positively impact the patient experience. With Medici, doctors can now generate new revenue from the after-hours busy work that was previously provided for free.
Good Word For Caregivers God cares for caregivers. Remember, he’s one too. Say, caregiver, are you depressed? Has your situation come to a place where you are really down under it all and you feel depressed? You’re pressed, and you feel that there must be something that can be done to help you? Well, I’m so glad to be here for this minute and a half to tell you. Don’t think it’s strange when you fall into one of these fiery trials that tries you. This is what Peter writes in his first letter. I don’t think it’s some strange thing that happened under you. It happens to a lot of people. What’s the answer? Well, the answer is rejoice. Yeah, rejoice. You say over what? Well, in as much as you’re a partaker of Christ’s sufferings that His glory shall be revealed, that you may be glad with exceeding joy. Is that what you need? Exceeding joy? Yeah, that’s what I think you need.
And I believe that God tells you can have it when you start rejoicing. You have to mentally just say, “I’m going to be full of joy,” because the joy of the Lord is your strength and so you’re going to rejoice. You may not feel it to begin with, but keep on doing it and it will begin to come to you in exceeding ways and your depression will be gone. It’ll go out the window. God cares for caregivers. Remember, he’s one, too.
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Jim Collins, in his book, Good To Great, talks about BHAG, Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Our guest today is Clint Phillips. He’s the founder of Medici, and his BHAG is to be the world’s most inspiring and innovative healthcare company. One million doctors helping one billion patients. His vision is to create technology that would revolutionize the way doctors provide care to their patients. And as a serial entrepreneur with a track record of success, Clint just may realize this vision. Clint, welcome to the show.
Clint: Thank you so much, Jon. It’s great to be talking to you.
Jon: Well, now this is not your first rodeo in healthcare technology, so bring us up to speed on the companies that you founded and sort of the genesis of Medici and really what it’s designed … The big problem that is designed to solve.
Clint: Yes. My first step into healthcare was we opened a clinic in Aspen, Colorado at St. Regis that helped people avoid back surgery and that was called Aspen Back and Body. It was my first thing in America, and coming from South Africa it was amazing to see that there was such a huge need for even something as simple as back pain and how difficult it was for people to understand care. While we were building this great business, it was never going to be a huge business, but it was definitely meaningful to the people who traveled from across the world to get out of pain, my little girl had a stroke. We realized that there was a much bigger issue and it was incredibly difficult to understand who our top doctor was and then how to access them.
Clint: We started a business in 2011 called Second MD that allowed you to access the world’s best doctors for a second opinion in which we would retrieve all your medical records for you, organize the information for these top doctors. It was incredibly difficult to build the technology platform that allowed for medical records to be retrieved and digitized, viewable across all different types of formats for doctors on all different types of computers and behind firewalls and hospitals. So it was technologically very difficult. And getting the top doctors in the world to agree to work for a company they’ve never heard from or heard of was no small undertaking. Seven years later, we’re very glad to say that we changed lives in amazing ways. We are now a benefit at a nearly 30 of the top 100 companies in America. So whether you are an investment banker at Morgan Stanley or a truck driver at Waste Management, you and your parents on are now covered by Second MD.
Clint: But we kept hearing this continual thing of, “Hey, we love what we did on Second MD last night. We had a video consult with a doctor we never would have had access to. We didn’t have to sign any paperwork. There was no cost. It was a remarkable experience. Could you help connect me to my doctor because I loved how I connected with your doctor last night? Could you connect me?” And we would say, “We don’t know your doctor.” And they’re like, “But it’s so hard to speak to my doctor. You don’t understand. I have to call the office a few times and voicemail they call me back on getting appointment in a few days’ time. Then if I’ll still be sick, or if it’s soon enough and then I have to sit in the big waiting room, the little waiting room, fill out all this paperwork all just to have this little exchange of information with my doctor. Please help.”
Clint: For many years we said, “That’s just not our business. We don’t know how to solve it.” That started to collect data points to say, “Well, what if messaging could be the real center of healthcare?” I now message more with family, work colleagues, through Facebook, through LinkedIn, through texts, through Slack. What if there was a tool like WhatsApp and how it’s used around the world? What if we could build that specifically for healthcare? To greatly lift the burden of doctors and to give the doctors some quality of life and greatly impact the patients in which they serve.” And that was the genesis of the Medici.
Jon: Wow. I think a lot of people don’t realize what’s involved to talk to a doctor. I mean, most of us take it for granted. We take text messaging and email, but with all of the HIPAA compliance and the firewalls and everything, it’s a huge undertaking. What does Medici and how’d you come up with that name?
Clint: It’s a funny story, Jon. I love the name. We were looking at starting a business a while back and Medici came as its medical it sounds like da Vinci. Then we looked up the Medici family and they had really transformed banking that enabled just industry and things to develop in amazing ways. We thought of, “Well, if they transform banking, we can transform healthcare with that same name.” We were a few weeks in and a developer who was from Romania said to us, “Well, Medici what it means in my country?” And I said, “No, don’t know what it means.” He said, “It means doctor.” I said, “Doctor, are you serious?” It turns out it’s Latin for doctor and it means doctor in about 13 languages. So it was just this beautiful, seemed God-inspired moment where we went, “Wow, we picked an amazing name without even knowing it.”
Jon: Yeah. Well, let me ask you, so if you were talking to a group of healthcare technology innovators, you’ve gone through some of these challenges and hurdles, what are some insights or words of wisdom that you would give them as they’re thinking of innovative ways to get through some of these challenges? Maybe some words of wisdom that you could provide for them?
Clint: Yes. The first is that healthcare is really, really hard. Healthcare is just insanely frustrating in that it’s controlled often by large hospitals or large insurers who are not necessarily motivated in the same way to be able to help a doctor or to be able to help a patient. They’re pretty happy with their system and they’re not looking to re-engineer them. They’re not looking for disruption. So you start with a-
Jon: What? The insurance companies are not looking for disruptors?
Clint: Crazy, hey? Well, they really have found a very lucrative system and they want to keep it. Now, there’s enough noise that we know things have to change. But for somebody getting into healthcare, if this change takes 10 years, you have to find a business model that would allow you to work at the speed of this change. Things are not going to change in the next few months. Although regulations I think are moving in the right direction, you have to have a model that can survive the difficulty.
Clint: The second piece I think is very important is healthcare is a calling. To me, don’t come into healthcare because you think that’s the next hot industry. Come into healthcare because you know that people need help. People want to know that in healthcare there are companies, they are executives, that there are businesses that really, at the end of the day, are trying to do good. It’s very easy to come in with some expensive new proposal that doesn’t really help anybody at the end of the day but I think it has to be a calling. That way you’re going to be able to deal with some of the pushback. That’s going to help you with your resiliency and it’s going to help you with the personal satisfaction. And at the end of the day, you are making the world a better place is a very important piece. So those would be two off the top of my head.
Jon: Love it.
Clint: Got many more if you need it.
Jon: I have many more if I need. Well, tell us a little bit we talked about transforming healthcare. Currently, it’s this massive, we go see the doctor, what is your vision? Let’s go through the speed of healthcare 10 years, what do you want healthcare delivery and communication. What do you want the healthcare experience to be like? Not just from your application, but holistically? What’s your vision of the future?
Clint: I’ll give you a small example. In the current timeframe, when you join our kids’ school, you’ve often moved from another area. You’ve moved from outside Austin and you arrive at the school, you found out that there’s this app called Medici. You download it and you enter in the school’s name. And as you’re entering the school name, it gives you 10 doctors that are available to you. They are two family practice doctors. There’re two pediatricians, a dietitian, a dermatologist, a chiropractor, a psychologist, and an orthopedic doctor. All instantly available to you. And it’s as simple as a message. You can see the average response time for these doctors and you can see how much they cost for a consultation. You as a mom now realize, “Oh, I forgot the veterinarian.” Probably the most loved person in the app is a fact that you now have a group of like-minded providers who are parents.
Clint: I think nine of the 10 of them are parents at the school who are very similar culturally-aligned people that can provide care for you. The idea that you would have to find all these different providers and find out who is good and visit the offices and go through all the paperwork, we can completely eradicate that. When we look at the opportunity for the doctor and that goal of having a million doctors and helping a billion people is the ability for these doctors to work a few days of the week from home yet still provide stellar care to their patients. The fact that these doctors could go on holiday and still earn some revenue and when they do it all, be able to push their patients to the next available doctor easily and stay in the loop.
Clint: Today, healthcare is becoming so fragmented in that my daughter’s medical record is at Urgent Care, and maybe it’s one of the online services, like a Teladoc and part of it may be at the hospital in Houston, the one in Austin, the one in Colorado. It’s healthcare so fragmented, none of these people follow my daughter for the long-term. What if we can create these relationships whereby it doesn’t matter where you necessarily if you move out of town, you can still, get the care from the people that have context about you, that have records about you. Just like I can get off the airplane in Cape Town, South Africa and order a large car for my family on Uber, or get a small car or a sharing with somebody in New York, I want to be able to be able to message and connect with my doctor, my veterinarian, my dentist, anybody in my healthcare world. That’s a reality today for the tens of thousands of patients that started to use us.
Jon: So as you’re looking out into the future, what is it that keeps you up at night?
Clint: Some nights I’m really kept up by an excitement of, “Are we going to get this big partner across the line?” If the partner comes across the line thinking around the implications. We’ve got a very global ambition here on not just solving this here in the US. We’ve got an office in South Africa now. Excited about Australia, South America, Asia is, are we spreading in the right direction? Are we making the right choices? And that gets you to the keeps you up at night and, “Have I made the right decision? Have I opened my office in the right place? Have I partnered with the right people? Have I built the technology that is truly scalable and isn’t going to collapse in a year’s time as we grow 100 fold?
Clint: There’re a lot of things. It depends on the night of the week, but we have to look at what’s going to happen with regulation. What’s going to happen with technology. What’s going to happen with picking the right things? I think the biggest challenge for any startup is knowing what things to focus on and knowing what things to get rid of. And it’s really difficult in a early stage company to always make those decisions correctly.
Jon: Yeah. Well, I think you’re doing really, really fantastic work and this is super exciting. And I know you guys were on in the news. You have had a very successful round A of funding a few months ago. So congratulations on that. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us this afternoon.
Clint: Jon, we exist to make healthcare better and the fact that some caregivers who we think are the real heroes in the world may be listening and people are really trying to make the system better. These are the folks that are building a better world. So thank you for the opportunity.
Jon: Love it. Love it. Well, if you want to learn more about Clint and Medici, you can visit his website, Medici M-E-D-I-C-I .md, or visit the show notes for this episode at coffeewithjon.com/112. If you found this episode valuable, Please do us a favor and subscribe to Coffee With Jon and iTunes and leave an honest rating. And if you’d like to listen to previous episodes, visit us at coffeewithjon.com. That’s Coffee With Jon J-O-N .com. Well, do you have a topic, suggestion, or comment about an episode? If so, I’d love to hear from you. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. All of the links are at coffeewithjon.com.
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Dementia is not a disease in itself. Rather, it is a broad name referring to a long-term and gradual deterioration of a person’s mental ability. The condition can be severe enough to obstruct the sufferer’s daily life. Put simply, dementia occurs when the brain cells stop working as they should, affecting the person’s ability to think, remember, and communicate. Its usual symptoms include the difficulty of reasoning and thinking, gradual memory loss, and deteriorating communication skills.
As Family and Professional Caregivers it is important that we properly understand dementia so we can provide the best care to our patients and loved ones. Dr. Michael Chua is a physical therapist that pracitces in Homes, Skilled Nursing Facilities and Acute Care Hospital environments. His clinical interest involves pain management, geriatrics and dementia management. He is also the Chief Inspirational Officer for TN Therapy Outsource and the author of MisUnderstanding Dementia.
~~Mis~~Understanding Dementia Dementia is not a disease in itself. Rather, it is a broad name referring to a long-term and gradual deterioration of a person’s mental ability.
The condition can be severe enough to obstruct the sufferer’s daily life.
Dementia occurs when the brain cells stop working as they should, affecting the person’s ability to think, remember, and communicate. Its usual symptoms include the difficulty of reasoning and thinking, gradual memory loss, and deteriorating communication skills.
The most common type of dementia is caused by Alzheimer’s, which accounts for 60 – 80% of the cases.
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Good Word for Cargivers God cares for caregivers. Remember, he’s one too. Are you a bit confused right now? I mean, you’ve had to make so many decisions as a caregiver and then you have these decisions that there could be one, two, three or more things that you could choose and you don’t really know which one and you feel a bit confused about it all. In fact, you’re just flat frustrated right now. Can I encourage you to do what the New Testament says to do in the Bible? If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that gives to all men liberally and it shall be given him.
Yes, you can have the wisdom of God and not feel this frustration that you’re feeling, this confusion that you’re having. I want you to know you can do better than that. How? Well, you trust in the Lord with all your heart and you don’t lean to your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and he shall direct your paths. Yes, he wants to direct you. You don’t have to be confused, He can tell you, “This is the way. Walk in it. This is the path. Take this one.” Don’t try to make it just your own thoughts and understanding, rely on the understanding and the wisdom of almighty God and you will do so much better, and you won’t have this confusion. God cares for caregivers. Remember he’s one too.
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Dr. Michael Chua is a physical therapist that practices in homes, skilled nursing facilities and acute care hospital environment. His clinical interests involve around pain management, geriatrics, and dementia management. He’s also the Chief Inspirational Officer for Tennessee Therapy Outsource and the author of MisUnderstanding Dementia. Dr. Michael, welcome to the show.
Dr. Mike Chua: Again, thank you very much for having me here in your show, Jon, I really appreciate it. Thank you for creating and starting this podcasts. We really need more of this type of shows and podcasts so we could educate more of caregivers out there, so thank you.
Jon: You’re welcome, my pleasure. Let’s start with this, let’s start with your why. Why did you get involved with dementia care?
Dr. Mike Chua: You asked me that about why, and I had to think about my why. Going back, I had my grandmother who had … In the Philippines, we don’t have a lot of dementia cases because a lot of people there die young and early. She’s my grandmother obviously, she’s old and she lived a good, long life and she had some sort of a mental issues. We had thought about dementia, so I said what’s going on with her? One day she would tell us she wants … she can go to the bathroom and then one day she just can’t do it. All we knew is that we thought that she was just crazy.
I come to realize and came here in America and worked in a nursing home, and here are all of this patients. I said, “This is what my grandmother had.” It’s dementia and I didn’t know. We probably talked about it in school probably for like 30 minutes, but I never really focused on it, and we focus more on pain, shoulder issues, stroke, Parkinson’s, but not dementia. That’s my why now and I want to know how it happens, where is it coming from. Is it hereditary? Is it this and that? That’s the reason why I’m here now and trying to take care of different dementia patients and caregivers.
Jon: Love it. What are some things that really are misunderstood about dementia and about how to care for dementia patients?
Dr. Mike Chua: One thing that is really misunderstood is us as a caregiver, we want to help and this is what happens when we help. This is the hand over here, and then we tried to give this hand and take care of the patient. What’s happening is that instead of holding the hand like this to the patient, what we do is just put our hand right in front of their face. Most of the time especially with dementia patient, they don’t appreciate help because they have what you call lack of awareness, or the medical term is called anosognosia, because hey don’t understand that they need help.
Us as caregivers, we want to help, we want to help, we want to help, then the patient doesn’t want any help. That’s where we come in as a professional caregiver. We try to come in not wanting to help but wanting to be partners. There’s this change of culture now that they don’t want to say the word caregiver, they want to care partner now-
Jon: Wow.
Dr. Mike Chua: … partner with the patient instead of giving the care.
Jon: That’s a powerful paradigm shift. As you’re partnering with the client or the patient, the family member, what are some things that you do when you’re partnering? How does that mindset sort of change the way that you approach, not caregiving, but how you approach partnering with that in mind?
Dr. Mike Chua: Just like any other person. Instead of giving it, you give them the decision making. Just like asking them what to wear, as simple as that. Us as a caregiver we come in, “Okay, you wear this, okay?” You used to be a daughter of that patient, and then, “Okay, I know mom likes this, I know she wants egg in the morning.” No, we need to be a care partner in giving them the decision so they could be empowered. This is what we need in teaching the majority of the caregivers now to empower our patients. Of course, it will be different in different stages.
Jon: Not just doing but really asking, “Mom, are, are you ready for breakfast?” You know, “Mom, do you want eggs for breakfast?” It’s around this process of asking a question instead of assuming. Is that correct?
Dr. Mike Chua: Definitely. That’s the phrase there.
Jon: Love it. Love it. As you’ve kind of worked with people, what are two or three practical tips that you’ve developed and thought of that you can give to family or professional caregivers when they’re working with Alzheimer’s patients or other conditions that are mental cognitive problems?
Dr. Mike Chua: Two or three? We’ve got 365 daily tips for dementia caregiver book. Well anyway.
Jon: Three hundred? That’s like one for every day.
Dr. Mike Chua: I know, right? Well I’m going to plug that in. I’ve got that special 365 daily tips for dementia caregiver book. It’s a good book. If you don’t have the ability to buy the book then you can just grab and pull a copy of those posts in my Facebook page. Anyway, the first tip that I really need to emphasize is about caregiving. You cannot give care if you don’t take care of yourself. Self-care is very importantly.
If you’re a caregiver right now and if you’re listening, you have to take care of yourself. Even God himself, he rested on the seventh day. I know we’ve got superpowers as caregivers, but you got to learn how to find risk, you’ll learn how to replenish your strength. Even nurses, they work 24 hours, probably 12 hours, they have to go home and rest. Me being a therapist, I work eight hours in a day. I have to go and rest. If you’re a caregiver right now, taking care of your loved ones, you have to find rest, you need to rest.
You can’t find any help? Go ahead and look for help. You can get social worker, you can reach out to Jon, he can reach out to any of his teammates and find somebody that will help you and assist you in getting rest. Okay?
Jon: Very powerful.
Dr. Mike Chua: Obviously, find a support group. You really, really need to find a support group. Me and John, we met at the 48 days group. It’s a very good support group, and everybody is empowering each other. If you’re in Facebook, if you are listening, if you’ve got Facebook, there’s this group called Alzheimer’s and dementia support group. We’ve got 26,000 members there. It’s a good group. It’s not perfect and sometimes people fight over their decision for their parents, but it’s a good support group.
Not just online, but also actual live support group. Go to your newspaper. I was reading my newspaper here today, there’s this section here, support groups. There’s an actual Alzheimer’s and support group here in my small city. This is a very small city, Martin, Tennessee, and we’ve got like probably 10,000 people only here, but we have a support group. What more for big cities. Find something, find a support group.
Jon: Love it. Love it. As you’re kind of looking in the industry and you’re working in this field, what is it that keeps you up at night?
Dr. Mike Chua: One thing that keeps me up at night is the caregivers out there. I’m already a professional, I had a hard time understanding caregiving. Every time I wake up in the morning, obviously, my one … my inspiration is my family, but when it comes to this field, it’s the caregivers out there. Caregiver burnout is real. If you’re a caregiver right now, you got to take care of yourself and reach out for help. That’s the one, that’s one thing that keeps me up at night, those caregivers out there who are really taking care of their loved ones.
Jon: I don’t think that we can over emphasize how important it is to take care of ourselves. Well, Dr. Mike, I appreciate it. Thank you for coming on the show today. If you want to learn more about Dr. Mike and the work that he’s doing, you can visit his website at drmikechua.com, or visit the show notes for this episode at [inaudible 00:12:17]. If you found this episode valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe to Coffee with Jon in iTunes, and leave an honest rating. If you’d like to listen to previous episodes, you can visit us at [inaudible 00:12:29]. That’s Coffee with Jon, J-O-N dot com. Do you have a topic, suggestion or a comment about an episode? I’d love to hear from you. Just connect with me on Linkedin, Facebook, or Twitter. All the links are at coffeewithjon.com
https://youtu.be/CvIgzSt6SHo
The thing that gets most businesses (including Senior Living Providers) into trouble more than anything else is assuming the way things worked before will continue to work.
How do great Senior Living providers become even better? Do they need access to more and new information, or do they need an environment where they can look at existing conditions in different ways? Where can Senior Living providers…and vendors that serve them, go to ask hard questions and tackle difficult issues?
Steve Moran is a nationally known and sometimes controversial writer and speaker in the senior living industry. He publishes the online senior living website Senior Housing Forum where the core value is to publish articles, videos, podcasts and other resources that help senior living providers do a better job serving residents, team members and the local marketplace community. He has developed and operated large and small senior living communities and has worked with senior living communities to create better more productive cultures.
Learn more about Steve https://youtu.be/Q9YFIj98NVE
SeniorHousingForum.net Senior Housing Forum is a website that is focused on publishing articles that are of interest to developers and operators of senior living communities.
There are 6 fundamental principals behind Senior Housing Forum
- We are Not Primarily a News Source – There are already several great free and paid sites that provide current senior living news, we are more focused on asking two questions:
- What does it mean?
- How will it impact the industry?
- We Question Everything – The thing that gets industries and businesses into trouble more than anything else is assuming the way things worked before (something that may in itself be an assumption that is not true) will continue to work. We ask hard questions and tackle difficult issues.
- We Love Comments – It is of course great fun to get comments that agree with what our writers say, but we love contrary positions even more. It is those comments that make the industry better.
- We Don’t Moderate Comments – If you write a comment it will get published (unless of course it is SPAM and we have a pretty good filter for that.) Since we published our first article we have not removed more than one or two comments and never removed a comment because the opinion was contrary.
- We Are Curious People – All of the regular writers are very curious people who know they don’t know it all. We are always learning and challenging our own assumptions.
- We are Not Perfect – Because of this we welcome comments, suggestions and criticisms and corrections of typos.
Good Word for Caregivers God loves caregivers. Did you know that? Remember, he’s one too. Say, it’s good to share some good news with you, particularly if you’re feeling a little bit blah, and that can happen. When you’ve expended your energies and you’ve gone beyond and you’ve given and you’ve given and then you had to give some more and you weren’t quite ready for that and you’re just into the blahs.
Well, let me tell you something. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. Well, they will mount up with wings as eagles, they will run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Maybe you feel weary and faint and the blahs have taken over. What do you do? Wait on the Lord.
What does that mean, wait? Well, I think for one thing, it means linger in his presence. Stay in his presence for a while. I know we live and move and have our being in him, but I mean consciously place yourself in the presence of God so that he can help you, then you can have other things happening for you that will be such a blessing in your life when you get rid of the blahs and you enjoy the presence of the Lord. It’ll mean a lot to you.
I encourage you to do it today. Right now’s a good time. God cares for caregivers. Remember, he’s one too.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. Steve Moran is a nationally known and sometimes controversial writer and speaker in the senior living industry. He publishes the online senior living website, Senior Housing Forum, where the core value is to publish articles, videos, and podcasts that help senior living providers do a better job serving residents, team members, and the local marketplace community. He has developed and operated large and small senior living communities and has worked with senior living communities to create better, more productive cultures.
Steve, welcome to the show.
Steve Moran: Thank you very much, Jon. I’m excited to be chatting with you today.
Jon: Well, we’re excited to have you here. So, first question, let’s start with how and why. How did you get into this industry? And why did you get out and back in again?
Steve Moran: Sure. Well, I could probably take up the whole podcast just answering that question, so I’ll give you a very abbreviated version of it. I graduated from college and was really intrigued by the real estate industry, got a real estate license, went to work, starting selling real estate, and honestly, I had an amazing first year. I made a ton of money, I was so excited, and then we had the very first, before probably you were born, oil crisis, economic crisis, and mortgage rates went to 18% and nobody bought anything.
Jon: Yeah.
Steve Moran: And so, I was desperate and I ran across somebody who had bought a little 15 bed board and care in northern California and they were making money on it, and at first, I couldn’t believe it and I looked at the numbers and so I thought, well I can do that too. And so, I bought some buildings and built some buildings, but I was too young, not smart enough, under capitalized, mostly wasn’t smart enough, and my whole little empire came crashing down around my head. It was a horrible, horrible experience. Did some work for some other people in the arena, and then I got the opportunity to go get rich in Silicone Valley.
Jon: Oh, great.
Steve Moran: Yeah, right?
Jon: Right.
Steve Moran: So, my goal was like at 41, 42, I was going to become a millionaire with stock options and then I could just retire and travel the world. Well, again, my timing wasn’t so good, so I got there just a little before the big crash. Always made an okay living there, didn’t like it very much through, and I, about four, five years ago, actually I guess it was more than that, about seven and a half, maybe eight years ago, we decided to make, kind of, a shift in our life and I wanted to actually go out and come back into senior living industry because where really my passion was.
And so, I went looking for a job, and as I was going through this process, I crossed paths with a guy who I was friendly with in the technology space who’d started a blog in the technology world. Did a little bit of work for him, and as I was making this transition, I thought, you know I can write. I wonder if I can start a blog in the senior living space? So I went to work for a company called Vigil Health Solutions that sells Help I Can’t Get up Systems for senior living communities, and the same week, I went to work for them, I wrote my first blog and I was back in the industry.
Jon: Wow. And was that blog, was that what become Senior Housing Forum?
Steve Moran: Yep. It was actually always Senior Housing Forum. It looked a lot different back then. It was a … I went out and bought a $5.00 a month hosting plan and bought myself a little bit of Word Press and put like the most basic theme in that I could use and I could manage, and I think the first article I ever wrote, I was just doing one a week, and the first article I ever wrote had about 30, 40 people who read it and that was mostly friends and family, but I guess they kept inviting people to read it and it grew and grew and grew, and after actually about 24 months, I realized that I was working for Vigil, they allowed me to grow this thing, and it did help in my business development with them and I was in the blog and it, all of sudden, become sort of this full time job on its own.
It was making a good living for me and I just couldn’t do both things, and so I quit with Vigil. They’re still a great sponsor for us. We have a very, very friendly relationship and this has been my full time gig for, I guess, four and a half, five years now.
Jon: So, who is your target audience? When you’re writing Senior Housing Forum, and for this podcast, who would be the perfect person that we want to chat with?
Steve Moran: Yeah, that’s a great question. And so, the target has always been the C suite down to about the executive director, marketing level person. And the idea behind it is that we want to publish content that’s going to help providers do a better job, and do a better job can mean lots of things. It might mean doing sales and marketing better, it might mean providing a better life enrichment program, it might mean treating team members better because that turns into better care, that might mean doing a better job in thinking about how you do your capital and your financing. And so, it means actually lots of things and we kind of touch on all those arenas and we touch on stuff that’s hard sometimes.
Jon: One of the things, as I was looking at your website, that really distinguishes you guys is that fact that you’re, not only do you sort of challenge kind of traditional thinking and the status quo, but you’re very open to learning. I don’t know if maybe that comes from your technology background of always trying, but what is it that you’re, by having that philosophy, what is that you’re trying to establish? How do you want to be different in the industry?
Steve Moran: So, I think the biggest thing that makes us different, so fundamentally, and I’ve already talked about this, is we’re primarily editorial, so we’re not really a new’s site at all. Maybe once a year, somebody will say, “Hey, I’ve got this really cool new’s story. I’m going to give it you first.” And that’s always fun to do, but that’s not really where we’re focused. Our goal really is, is just to say, this is a great industry, but how do we make it better?
And so, I used to worry that it was a little bit arrogant honestly, because my goal has always been to say, I actually see what we do. I see me as a blogger, as a writer, as a publisher, as being a part of the industry. So, when the industry is successful, that’s my success. If the industry has a failure, that’s my failure.
And so, I think that what would be fair to say about most of the other media outlets, and this is not negative, it’s just different, is that mostly they’re new’s organizations, and so they’re saying these are the things that are going on. These are the trends we’re seeing, and I’d rather say, okay, we know these trends, but what does it mean and how can we shake things up?
Jon: Yeah. So looking out over kind of the last year, 2018, we’re coming up on the close of 2018, what are some of those things that you saw in 2018 that you thought were really worth having a conversation about?
Steve Moran: Great question. I think that one of the things that we’re seeing that’s really important is that we have a lot of senior living organizations that are struggling economically, and they’re not struggling so much because the buildings or the operations are inherently bad, but what happened was, there was so much free and easy money, particular from the little state investment trust, that they sold away so much of the value that there’s not a lot of margin for much downturn, and so we’ve had this big growth in inventory that has made occupancy either stall out or actually drop a little bit, and yet, they’ve got these capital contracts with these rates, which are really leases, that actually require them to pay more money and so it’s just left a lot of money, or not really having enough money in there, so people are really struggling. We’ve seen some big restructuring there.
Also, there’s a lot of talk right now about the human capital problem, and for sure, that’s an issue, although I would say that the biggest problem we actually have is much more retention rather than it is recruitment. We actually are recruiting a lot of people, but we’re just not doing a great job of holding on to the people that we hire and making them feel like senior living is the number one place to go to work, so that’s a big challenge.
Jon: That’s, kind of, an area of passion. I’ve got a background in the recruiting industry. What are you seeing that’s working well to solve that problem in retention?
Steve Moran: So, I think that there’s some people who are really doing some great job, and this is a tough problem for me because, I think that the key to good retention is treating people like you like them and like you value them and there are a lot of people who doing programs and they have initiatives and there’s a place for all of that, but I think mostly what I see is that the places they’re really successful, is they’re just spending time, leaders are spending time talking to and getting to know the people who are working for them. They know about their kids and their families and their struggles and their ambitions and their dreams.
There are a couple of companies that are working on some really, really cool initiatives where they are bringing together both residents and longer term team members to create committees that actually work on holding on to new employees. There’s a community in southern California called Round Tree Garden and they actually hired a millennial to do their hiring. And, he is so passionate about the industry, and one of the things he does with new hires is he looks at them and he does actually, he says, “I expect you to really care for this person like it’s my grandmother. You’re going to do that, right?” And then he looks at them and says, “This isn’t always an easy job and sometimes things don’t go right. So, I want to have you make me a promise that, if you get discouraged and you think about quitting, before you quit, you’ll come and talk to me about it, and then you can quit if you still want to, but you’ve got to come and talk to me.”
And it’s had a really profound impact and people who are struggling come and talk to him and he can help them make it better and so it’s been really good interesting stuff.
Jon: It’s funny just how kind of having that human touch, just treating people like human beings, where they’re respected and you know what they want and I don’t know anyone stays in a job for 20, 30 years anymore. Those days are long over, so that’s a false expectation in the first place, but while you’re here, giving your best, being valued, and having everyone know when it’s time to move on and to transition to something else.
Something that I’ve seen a lot in the news, and I think it’s happening a lot in Europe, is these, sort of, communities that are being built out where they’re intentionally multi-generational communities. I think there’s some stuff in the Netherlands, I also think in Japan as well. They have some communities. Have you seen any of those types of experiments come over here to the states and have you seen sort of intentional multi-generational communities being built out?
Steve Moran: I wish I could tell you that there were some great multi-generational places out there. There’s certainly some discussion about it. You do see some senior living buildings that are built either on the campuses of universities or adjacent to universities, so there’s some back and forth with university students and they’re typically occupied by people who are alumni of those universities.
We also are seeing some communities where they’re doing things like preschool or daycare as a part of the community so the residents can have some interaction with little kids. I sort of have this big dream idea of, I don’t know whether this would work or not, right, but I’m very intrigued by the small house movement, although I’ve got so much junk in my house it’d take me about 10 of them to fit in.
Jon: Yeah, I would need like 10 small houses to make it work.
Steve Moran: Yeah, but imagine for a minute, imagine for a minute, you built this, kind of, a village with a bunch of small houses. They were really close together, but had all this common yard space and maybe a common kitchen or common meeting room, and you’d have a mix of young families and older seniors, and in some cases, the young families would be able to provide the caregiving and get paid for that, which would make the cost of living lower for them and it would make the cost of living potentially lower for the residents and they’d still have their own homes and they’d interact and really do life together, and I haven’t seen anybody really do that, but it’s an idea that really intrigues me.
Jon: So, let’s use that to kind of transition to the question that I love to ask, which is, what keeps you up at night? And you can answer that either, “Hey, this is what scares me and I’m worried about it.” Or you can answer it, “Man, this is what I see down the road and I can’t sleep because I’m so excited.” So, what keeps you up at night?
Steve Moran: Well, there’s so many ways I could answer that question. I guess the biggest thing that keeps me up at night on, sort of, a negative side of things is that, we are not willing to condemn publicly and shame bad operators. By coincidence, I’m actually publishing tonight, which will be later in terms of when this goes out, but I’m actually publishing, what I can only call a rant, about how the Carlisle Group bought HCR Manor Care and they ended up in bankruptcy, and a week or so ago, there was a, sort of, an expose story in the Washington Post about it and I felt like I needed to weight in because the industry has been or less silent about it.
The comment in there that really drove me crazy was the Carlisle Group, in talking about the bankruptcy that took place, they said, “Well, nobody lost any money in it.” And yeah, see? That’s my reaction.
Jon: For those you that are listening to this podcast, I just gave this really weird look and so that’s the reaction was this funny look on our face going, A, how does that happen? B, so?
Steve Moran: Yeah. I mean the problem is, is how many families were neglected? How many residents ended up in the hospital or had poor quality of life? I will tell you, and I’ve written about it before, but until this article, I haven’t publicly talked about it, but my mom had a stroke. I needed to put her in long term care. We thought skilled nursing would be great to get some rehab, and I toured four or five buildings, found a Manor Care building, and in the day, it seemed really, really nice and they were really oriented towards therapy and it was going to be this cool thing and so we made arrangements. I signed all the paperwork.
The ambulance didn’t get her to the nursing home until 7:30 in the evening, and within 10 minutes, I knew I’d made a horrible mistake because nobody cared that she was there. And, after five days, we took her out. The day we took her out, she had clothing that was covered with feces, and it wasn’t the caregivers. The caregivers were trying so hard. They just didn’t have enough help and we, as an industry, ought to be condemning that and be ashamed of that and saying, that’s not us, and that’s not good enough.
Jon: Yeah. So on the positive side, what are you excited about?
Steve Moran: Yeah. So, my positive side is, overall, particularly on the senior living, assisted living side, we do an amazing job of caring for seniors and we have great opportunities. We’re changing the world. There’s great opportunity in the low, low middle income marketplace that I’m really excited about. We’re actually getting ready to do one day summit on that in the spring of next year, and I do think that we’re seeing people begin to get more creative about ways to do things like intergenerational, and so I think that there are a lot of people who are saying, “What we have today is great, and it’s maybe even good enough for what it is, but we need more options. We need to more creative.” And there are a lot of really smart people who are thinking about that stuff, so I’m really excited about that.
Jon: Yeah. I think it’s a great time, and this is the thing that I’m learning is, we all get older and we’re going to be dealing with this one way or another. So, Steve, I’m so glad that you out there in the industry and you’re helping us to kind of stay where we’re supposed to be, so thank you very much.
Steve Moran: Oh, you’re very welcome. It’s a labor of love, it’s the best job I’ve ever had.
Jon: Awesome. Well, if you want to learn more about Steve and the work that he is doing at Senior Housing Forum, you can visit his website, SeniorHousingForum.net, or visit the show notes for this episode at CoffeeWithJon.com/110.
If you found this episode valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe to Coffee with Jon in iTunes and leave an honest rating. If you’d like to listen to previous episodes, visit us at, CoffeeWithJon.com. That’s Coffee With Jon, J-O-N, dot com.
Well, I’m already lining up interviews for season two and would welcome your suggestions, comments and ideas for upcoming episodes, so just connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. All of the links are at CoffeeWithJon.com.
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