Aging Life Care Managers Can Be a ‘Godsend’ for Families

Kristin Martinelli began her workday at 7:30 a.m. on a recent Monday, completing an online Medicaid recertification form for a client in a nursing home in Austin, Texas. Next, she drove to meet an 85-year-old and her daughter, who had come in from out of town. The older woman had “pretty advanced dementia” and was scheduled to move into the secure memory care unit of a senior living facility that day, said Martinelli, who works as an aging life care manager with Mir Care Consultants in Central Texas. The three of them had a 9 a.m. meeting with the primary care doctor who would complete the paperwork for the move. At the meeting, Martinelli explained the situation, and the doctor said he’d fill in the patient’s forms that afternoon. But later in the day, she got a call from a colleague saying that the doctor wouldn’t be able to complete the forms that day after all. That created a scramble because the woman wasn’t safe alone in her house. Martinelli ended up calling a home care agency she trusted. “I begged them to provide me with a caregiver in the next four hours,” she said. If a combination of appointments, bureaucracy, vigilance, and worry about a vulnerable older person — often...