EPISODE 6 (PART 2) Continuation of why it is overwhelmingly important not to approach assisted living alone

In Part 2 of our conversation, Jamie and Team Senior community liaison Linda G. explain why planning before a health crisis gives families better choices — including solutions that may prevent a move altogether.

They also share financial strategies for long-term care, how Medicaid works in Oregon, and how to protect your home and assets when one spouse needs care.

From “financial divorce” to GPS solutions, this episode is packed with compassionate, creative options that make aging safer and less stressful.

Call Team Senior at (541) 295-8230 for personalized help.

Transcript

Jamie Callahan: Hi, this is Jamie Callahan with the Team Senior Podcast. Our goal is to simplify aging society, grooms us to plan for retirement, but what about life beyond retirement, where the rubber meets the road? Perhaps you've had a stroke or you've been diagnosed with cancer, or maybe you're forgetting things and now you have dementia.

That's our area of expertise, and we are here to share our insight. And now the Team Senior podcast. Hi, this is Jamie Callahan again. We are back in the studio with Linda Greer. Linda, welcome again. Thank you. So we're gonna continue sharing information about things that you might want to consider and in when you're looking at, all things long-term care, but also how to utilize team senior if you need us.

So Linda, I wanna move on quickly. To just understanding for folks the Medicaid application process. This is something that we have to execute all the time, right? And it's a complicated conversation that we have with folks when we're sitting in their living room, especially in a spousal situation.

So we're gonna spend a couple minutes here talking about this specifically. Okay? So let me just ask you, if you're meeting with a family who's communicating to you that they cannot afford, or you can just see that, that they can't afford to pay. Five, seven, $10,000 a month to assisted living. How do you help them?

Linda: First of all, we would talk about the Medicaid program team Senior has experts in the Medicaid, Medicare and other funding options. So in this, in a case where a family clearly doesn't have the funds to afford, a senior or as assisted living community, we would help them apply for the Medicaid program and help explain what the Medicaid program is.

Many don't even know it exists. There are two ways to be accepted to that Medicaid program. One is financial and the other is medical. We would explore, what the needs are for that senior to make sure that they will be accepted to the Medicaid program. And in some instances we've had families that didn't get approved for that program and team senior went back and advocated for them and turned that decision around.

Jamie Callahan: What is the financial threshold for Medicaid approximately? 

Linda: I believe it's around $2,500.  In income. 

Jamie Callahan: Income and assets, right? 

Correct. 

Linda: Yeah. 

Jamie Callahan: Okay. So when we are working with a spousal situation, this is a complicated area that we come into all the time. So when we're working with an individual.

And they have limited resources financially, it's pretty easy to explain to them how their situation is going to roll into Medicaid if and when it's necessary. When we're dealing with a spousal situation, many times Spousals will not execute a move because they're so afraid of depleting their financial resources.

And then how are they going to continue to care for themselves in their home of the last 40 or 50 years, knowing that now they're gonna be spending, again, sometimes $10,000 a month for their loved one to move into assisted living. So in that dynamic, we have a solution. 

Linda: We do the first thing I would suggest is that they contact one of our very savvy attorneys that can separate the assets and protect the assets for the the well spouse that's gonna remain in the house.

And Medicaid is also. They're not gonna come out and just take the house from you. But it is good to meet with the attorneys that we have and they can help you divide those assets. 

Jamie Callahan: Yeah, sometimes they can help you get what's essentially a financial divorce, which allows the spouse that does not require care and wants to stay home to retain the house, a vehicle and a substantial amount of money in the bank, which then allows the spouse that requires care to convert to Medicaid and, be able to move into long-term care and have it not be such a financial burden. It's a huge win in the state of Oregon again. Tell me a little bit about your opinion of the value of what a community liaison brings to a family. 

Linda: Oh my gosh. I wouldn't myself even approach figuring this out without a liaison, frankly.

There are so many details, so many opportunities, options considerations whether you're in the hospital or coming from home. It's just so nice to, especially with Team Senior, to tap into such a vast group of knowledge. People that have the knowledge in all the areas that you need to consider.

So it's just, it's complicated and I've heard nothing but wonderful things said about Team Senior and the help that they bring and how the family couldn't have done it without us, especially as quickly in some instances, it has to be done. 

Jamie Callahan: Yeah. And I, this is a great segue into personal story that I share with Linda.

So Linda, as has been with. Team Senior for about the last year. We talked about that in the beginning of the podcast and when she first came on board with Team Senior, she is married to a physician herself who has lent information to seniors about, what you need to do to move into assisted living, and a question that her husband asked her when she was first coming on board with team seniors.

Why does anybody need you? And he himself has reached out to me now personally and has shared stories about families that Linda has helped amongst his own team of doctors almost in tears because he now definitely sees the value and the difference that Linda brings to the table. So thank you.

Linda: Thank you. 

Jamie Callahan: So in light of what we know, your husband now appreciates about what you do, let's talk about the key questions that families should consider when choosing an assisted living community. 

Linda: Absolutely. There's a lot to consider and a lot of the input comes from the senior and the family.

Number one is the financial resources. Once we've solved that then you wanna look at the level of care each community can provide. Some provide low level care. I. To a certain point, and then others can take care of somebody who's got a lot more complicated care needs. There's always the environment how big the community is, how what's the ratio between the caregivers and the med techs to the senior.

And then of course there's always. The availability. Reputation is important too, but the availability of the, of an opening in one of these communities we seem to always be on some form of a a timeframe. So that is something to consider. 

Jamie Callahan: Absolutely. Reputation is huge also, but I will always want to encourage families to lean on not what they've heard in the community, but what we can show them in.

Survey. And from our own personal experiences, we often use the term the chandelier doesn't provide the care. And that is sometimes in reference to some of the really nice communities that you see here in southern Oregon where aesthetically they provide this. This beautiful place that you could live.

But what we know about what's happening behind closed doors is that perhaps the care is not good right now. And there are just the opposite of that too. There are some adult foster homes here that provide absolutely exceptional care, but maybe they haven't mowed their lawn in the last 10 years.

And what I can tell you is that. Some of those places provide exceptional caregiving. And it really sometimes in those situations comes down to the acuity of care that you need. There are communities that if you're pretty high functioning it's a great option for you. But if you require a lot of caregiving, it's probably not a good option for you because not only do we hear the complaints that are happening in the community, we're actively moving people out of there on a regular basis.

Linda: Yes. Good point. Yes. So to just, to have that knowledge and guidance is really important and to know which questions to ask. So we actually take, and I enjoy this so much, we take our clients either the senior and the family or just the family out to see the different communities that we are recommending.

So that they can see it firsthand. 

Jamie Callahan: Yeah, that's definitely one way that team seniors sets itself apart from the Department of Human Services. They serve an absolutely fabulous role in the community, and their caseloads are very high, but one thing that they've never been able to do is take people around in their own vehicle to tour these communities.

And that is so important in the role of a community liaison because when you show up. That sales person from the community is there to share with you all the fabulous things about their community, and they're gonna tell you what they want you to know. We're there to help you Ask those complicated questions.

Can they accommodate a diabetic diet? Can they accommodate a vegetarian diet? Are they really going to accommodate a vegetarian diet or are they just gonna give you the vegetables or amid. The meat. So it's really important to have somebody there that knows you, 'cause they've taken the time to do a really thorough assessment of, not just your finances and your care needs, but what do you want?

Do you wanna be in the country? Do you like kids? Do you like dogs? What is really valuable to you? Yeah. So I feel like this is a great opportunity to close the podcast with presenting the question to Linda, and I can probably share a little bit of information here as well.

But I wanna ask you, what is your opinion on the right time to call Team Senior? I. 

Right now no matter where you are in the process, 

Linda: if you've got 

Jamie Callahan: if you are in your eighties let's talk. If you are a family and you're starting to 

Linda: com, 

Jamie Callahan: be concerned about your loved ones and how they're doing in their home.

Call us now, the more time we have to make the plan and to show you what your options are the less we have to scramble. And we can take a time and maybe put a deposit down at your favorite place and wait for the opening versus you're in the hospital. You had an incident, you broke your hip, and now they're at hospital saying, okay, you're fine now get out.

I guess they don't say that, but they're pushing to get you to move and we may not have the time to get you the choice that you really would have had, had we started sooner. 

Yeah. And another really great point is the earlier you call team senior, the sooner we can help you explore creative solutions that may not even involve a move.

So an example. Very good point. Yeah. An example of that would be that very recently we received a phone call from a spousal a married couple and they lived in Grands Pass and the adult children really wanted mom to move into memory care because she had gone missing and search and rescue had to go and look for her a number of times, and they lived on the river.

So mom had gone down the bank, and again, this was two or three times. Oh. Search and rescue had gone to look for mom, but sitting at the table, I could really hear this profound sentiment from the husband that he did not want to be separated from his wife. Yeah, he loved her so much. He was still seeing so much of her throughout the day, and while the kids were completely against mom staying at home, we were actually able to not only.

Create a plan that allowed him to do that, but it also saved them probably a hundred thousand dollars over the course of the first year, because what we did is we said, Hey, you're on the river and you don't have a fence around your property. So let us call a fencing company. We're gonna get a keypad installed, and then we're gonna get this little device in mom's shoe.

So chances are she's probably not gonna be able to get out of the fence. But if she does, we're gonna be able to put a GPS tracker on her. Essentially, the kids were so happy with that solution. Like I said, memory care is upwards of $10,000 a month right now, so that would've cost them $120,000 in the first year to put mom into memory care where, as opposed to it cost them maybe $20,000 to defense their house and they got to do everything that they wanted to do.

It was probably about two years after that conversation. That they called back and said, it's time. It's time. Yeah. Mom definitely needs to go to memory care now, but those are the things that we can really help families to explore that may not have been on your radar before. That's 

Linda: right. That is a really sweet solution.

And that's something that this team really strives to, help the family get what. They really want. So I love that story. Yeah. It's something that we 

Jamie Callahan: really pride ourselves on and I know just to close with this, I have, I started Team Senior in 2016. And I have had the pleasure of working with some absolutely dynamic people who have the biggest hearts.

In Southern Oregon, we are a pretty robust team of folks that serve with the absolute best intentions for folks every single day. And when I hire someone, I often say, this is gonna be the hardest job you've ever had. We're working with people on a daily basis that are in a time of crisis.

They're operating under duress. It's very. Sad. It's oftentimes end of life, but the one thing you'll go home with every single day is you feel like a hero. You are literally solving problems that they could not have solved on their own. I'm curious to know what your feeling has been since working for the company.

Oh, 

Linda: it's the best part. I just got a. Solved a very complicated situation with a family. And we finally crossed the finish line last night and it's gonna make me cry, but this adult child was in tears because she was at her wits end, didn't know how to solve the problem with her parents.

And a lot of times that happens, but we were able to solve it and she was just in tears and she wants to advocate for us because she believes that, that a lot of families don't know we're here and all the things that we can do for them, it was so gratifying, and that's why I love this job. 

Jamie Callahan: There's so much truth to that.

I often make this funny analogy that Team Senior is like a mattress store. It's a ridiculous analogy, but I share that because when you need a mattress. You suddenly recognize that there's a mattress store on essentially every corner of every town, but you don't even notice them until you need it.

And that's very similar to what we do, right? We work in long-term care. And so until somebody is in need of helping an aging loved one or discharge from the hospital or something like that we could advertise in every magazine, newspaper, radio, tv, all the things. And you really don't even have the ability to comprehend what we do until you're working with us.

So that's a really good point. Yeah. 

Linda: Yep. 

Jamie Callahan: Alright, Linda, I wanna say thank you so much for coming today. Linda Greaser again, she's our Jackson County Community Liaison. She is fabulous. She's been doing this for a long time. As I said earlier, her husband's a doctor, so she has a lot of great additional insight at home, bouncing ideas off of him.

I was very fun to hear his story about coming around when initially he was like, what are you gonna do? But now he totally gets. And so does everybody or every family that's ever worked with us. Anyway, thank you all so much. We will. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you so much, Linda, for being here.

And we will talk with you again next week. Okay, sounds good. Thank you for listening to the Team Senior podcast. We're here every week sharing new and relevant information. Remember that we're just a phone call away. Team Senior can be reached at 541 295 8230. Again, 5 4 1 2 9 5 82 30. Until next time, this is Jamie Callahan.