Life Care Management Pittsburgh

What is Life Care Management Pittsburgh?

Our Licensed Certified Life Care Managers are experts in navigating and supporting aging related issues and family concerns.
Aging Life Care Management is a holistic, client-centered approach to caring for adults facing ongoing health challenges.

Life Care Managers help your family and loved elders navigate the healthcare maze. Working closely with families, the professional, licensed experts of Holistic Aging – Options For Elder Care LLC provide answers at a time of uncertainty. Their guidance leads families to actions and decisions that ensure quality care and an optimal life for their loved ones thus reducing worry, stress, and time off of work for family caregivers.

Although Life Care Management Pittsburgh is private pay, our expertise in guiding you and your family through the healthcare maze will actually save you money. As Baby Boomers move into their golden years, their adult-aged children are feeling the financial and emotional strain of caring for them, according to the Care.com 2019 Cost of Senior Care survey.

The first annual survey, compiled with insights from more than 7,500 family caregivers nationwide, showed how family members are handling the costs and stresses that come along with this critical, yet costly and challenging, role.

Read about the costs of senior care survey

Alzheimer’s – The Most Feared Disease

Alzheimer’s is a brain disease that causes a slow decline in memory, thinking and reasoning skills. The fear of acquiring the disease is of major concern to most aging adults and differentiating normal age loss from a neurocognitive disorder is of utmost concern. I have listed below the ten early signs to look in a neurocognitive disorder…

Do you have concerns like these?

My loved one in not safe living in their home alone.
The doctor/nurse/caregiver/etc. told me my parent can no longer live at home.
I don’t understand all the options and costs of all the alternative living arrangements.
The health care system is overwhelming to navigate.
My loved one gets worse with each hospital stay.
My loved one has memory problems and I need help.
I live a good distance away from my parents and need someone to oversee their care.
My family is having a difficult time agreeing on the best treatment for our parent.
We need an expert’s assistance to guide us.
I want the QUALITY of my parent’s life to improve.
Should my wife be driving?
My father is not taking his pills.
My mother’s forgetfulness is concerning.
I have three children, a full time job, and live 100 miles away; I just can’t do it all anymore!

RN Disease Management:

With a registered nurse (RN) assigned to every case, we effectively bring older adults life and “disease” back into balance.

Appropriate Living Environment:

We are educated experts on the housing options in the Pittsburgh and surrounding areas.

Owing to 30 years of experience, we know what facilities provide quality care, will customize our recommendations to the client’s specific needs and financial budget, and oversee that the care provided continues to serve our client well. Our ethical standards prevent us from receiving any financial incentive from any facility. Therefore, you can rest assured our recommendations are specific to each individual’s needs, taking the entire picture into account.

Advocate at Doctor appointments:

The Life Care Manager plays an important role with all the providers (doctors, physical therapists, dentists, etc.) of medical care for the client.

Life Care Managers act as the central point of contact. As a result, unity of all services and treatments is assured. Furthermore, with this unity in place, Life Care Managers have the tools to ensure client preferences are clearly outlined and maintained in all aspects of care. We usually accompany our clients to all their doctor appointments acting as the clinical liaison. In this case, we are the navigators through emergency departments and hospitalizations, rehabilitation stays, and ensuring our clients receive the best care available.

Memory Disorder:

Care for a spouse or parent with Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, Frontotemporal Dementia, Parkinson’s Disease or one of the many memory disorders is a difficult task and, at times, an overwhelming one.

Financial and Legal:

Services may include reviewing or overseeing bill paying or consulting with a client’s accountant or Financial POA to maximize the use of their budget.

Our Life Care Managers work with Elder Law Attorneys to assure all the legal needs of our aging clients are executed such as Power of Attorney documents. We also frequently work as a team member for those requiring medical over site with a trust fund. Generally, clients and families have questions regarding health and long-term insurance which we have the expertise to assist in understanding claims, maximizing insurance benefits, and assuring the healthcare policy you choose is in your best interest.

Local Resource:

We have expert knowledge of all the services available in the Pittsburgh and surrounding areas.

Ultimately, this knowledge helps ensure clients can tap into any and all entitlement programs that they qualify for. In short, this assists in maintaining quality care. Veteran Benefits, Low income aging benefits, transportation, or financial assistance with home remodeling all fall into this category. Correspondingly, we know how to access these benefits and ensure you obtain what you are entitled to.

Medication Management:

The RN Life Care Manager determines the best customized individual methodology to assure the client takes their medication.

They also review each individual medication prescribed and assure it is necessary to improve the life of the older adult. Polypharmacy refers to the effects of taking multiple medications concurrently to manage coexisting health problems. Too often during our initial assessments, we see clients prescribed too many medications by multiple healthcare providers. They work independently of each other and don’t usually consider the interactions between the drugs. We become the provider that knows the patient’s complete medication picture and assure they do not have adverse drug reactions.

Family Dynamics:

More often than not, one family member will bear the brunt of caring for their parent.

Usually, that individual will struggle to get other family members on board with seeking outside help. Life Care Managers use their skills to get past family dynamics such as these that prevent a care giver and their loved ones from living quality lives. We value the input of all those seeking to be involved with the care of a loved one. We do are best to ensure all opinions are respected. Often, the act of hiring an expert for advice can be the solution in and of itself.

Holistic Care Management:

We offer a unique service you will not find with any other care management company.

Holistic means that things should be studied as a whole and not just as a sum of their parts. Therefore, we are not just looking at medications, tests, and treatment of disease but considering other issues, which could be the root cause.

Typically, Conventional Medicine focuses solely on the physical health – looking at the illnesses and cures.

At Holistic Aging we strongly believe that the body should not be looked as individual parts. Instead our holistic approach looks at how the many parts and systems of the body interact and support one another.

Our care focuses on healing, as well as attention to all aspects of the individual, including their physical, emotional, cultural, mental, social, and spiritual needs. As a result, we frequently find the “disease” subsides when we address the underlying cause of the symptom.

Tips For Families Caregiving for Their Loved Ones

Caregiving for mom or dad, whether you live an hour away or in a different state presents very real challenges. How can you be both a daughter/son and coordinate necessary tasks when you have the responsibility to manage your parent’s care from far away? The number of American’s providing or managing care for a relative…

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Lori Wynn

17:57 10 Jan 21

As a physical therapist over the last year, I have worked with some of the clients of Holistic Aging. The clients are... accompanied by the excellent caregivers of Holistic Aging to their appointments. I have spent a good amount of time witnessing the way that these caregivers attend to their clients. The clients are treated by the staff like they are family. The details of their lives are well known and their well-being is top priority. On numerous occasions, I have needed to communicate with the staff, and this is always seamless. If I had family in need of elder care, I would be eager to have one of these exceptionally caring staff of Holistic Aging be a part of the team.read more

Julie Densmore

19:52 10 Aug 20

The Best Medical Investment and Care Decision Our Family Has Made I highly recommend Holistic Aging for their Life Care... Manager support of an aging loved one who may be living in the Pittsburgh area. Bobbi and her team of qualified individuals are compassionate and trained in geriatric care management. They have provided unsurpassed medical and general support for my 85 year old mother-in-law (MIL) over the past 2 years while we are living on the West Coast. Their services provide us with peace-of-mind and confidence that our loved one is safe and cared for even when we cannot be present. Their expert care has enabled my MIL to live comfortably alone in her home. They have helped to systematically address and resolve my MILs growing medical issues and ensure that her most pressing challenges are adequately managed. Our life care manager, Kristi - who is a RN - accompanies my MIL to all doctor appointments to ask the right questions during the visit. Kristi maintains a comprehensive picture of my MIL's health conditions and acts as her personal advocate at all doctor visits. We chose Holistic Aging for their fusion of both East and Western treatment modalities that are tailored to the unique individual so along with medical care, my MIL has received acupuncture, nutritional supplements, massage, and myofacial release therapies - all considered to be "alternative" to treatments and normally would not have been offered. However, each of these treatments have majorly improved my MIL's well-being so we welcome the East/West treatment fusion that Holistic Aging provides. We are incredibly grateful and impressed with the service that Holistic Aging provides for our family. I highly recommend them for care of a loved one. Thank you Bobbi and Kristi!read more

Carina Didiano

01:49 20 Aug 18

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate Renee’s work as a nurse with her clients, who are in their early 90’s. I... have worked with her for a while now and she has such a good heart, especially when it comes to her clients well being. She always goes above and beyond for all of them! She deserves the recognition.read more

Dianna Long

01:25 30 Jan 18

Personally sought advice and counsel from the owner - very helpful and knowledgeable about reimbursement and geriatric... aging. Owner keeps up to date on all related geriatric trends and medication trends. True desire to change and help the lives of those aging - to improve the quality of life and ensure maximum reimbursement.read more

Morgan Grimes

20:33 07 Nov 17

Not only does this agency provide excellent care for their cliental, they are a wonderful agency to work for. The... office staff is compassionate and caring not only about their work but their employees as well. The entire staff has very open communication that makes the care individualized and highly affective.read more

Holistic Aging Client

18:23 05 Sep 17

It is difficult to put into words how much Susan’s work with Holistic Aging has meant to our family. After my father... passed away, he left behind our widowed mother, physically weak, depressed and living at some distance from family. She was vulnerable in so many ways, needing help with things including medical and nursing care, physical therapy, transportation, financial protection, troubleshooting and coordinating a complex array of services. We found that we just couldn’t manage everything from a distance, and that what we needed more than anything else was someone acting as Mom’s advocate and coordinating her access to needed supports. Susan stepped in and really took charge of the situation, keeping tabs on everything happening on the medical front, not only making sure that key appointments were made and kept, but also accompanying Mom to them and maintaining organized health reports. Susan ensured that no one was taking financial advantage, that in-home caregivers were providing adequate support, and even that home maintenance problems were addressed. She really made an effort to understand our mother and her unique needs. Susan was willing to play bad cop as necessary, dismissing caregivers who weren’t up to the job, arranging for better ones to be put in place, making sure that physical therapy proceeded on schedule, and pushing back on advice from any service sellers that didn’t serve our mother’s interests. Because Susan was so organized, committed, and pro-active, we are in a much improved situation now: Mom’s health, mental outlook and physical conditioning are all better than they were a couple of years ago. Having Susan there was the closest thing we could manage to actually having a family member on-site to look after our mother.read more

Rebekah Simpson

13:12 19 Oct 16

Bobbi and her team of care manager's have been a "God Send" to our family. My mother has Alzheimer's disease and with... family all over the country, we were not able to assist mom with the needed care she required to continue to live a meaningful life. A friend of ours had used Options For Elder Care services and highly recommend them. They know everything there is to know about Alzheimer's, not only improving my mom's life but realizing the stress of our entire family. We will continue to have challenges as mom progresses through Alzheimer's but feel confident being directed by this care management company.read more