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Making the decision to hire a home care service to provide care for your loved one is an important decision and can, at the same time, be very difficult. If an illness or recovery from surgery requires nursing care or physical therapy, a physician may order skilled home care services that provide both skilled providers and personal aides. Your decision is then based on the obvious medical determinations made by the doctor. But what if you as the family caregiver must determine the extent of care needed without the help of a doctor?

Each home care situation is unique. In the beginning, family or friends step in to help with simple tasks and support for aging seniors who want to stay in their homes. As long term care needs progress, more time is required to manage those needs. Physical and mental conditions change with aging making usually routine hygiene and daily living activities difficult for an aging individual. Even with the healthiest of seniors, the ability to drive a car, shop for groceries or do general housekeeping eventually needs to be relinquished to the responsibility of another person.

In one example, Karen, would stop by her parents’ home on her way to work every morning and again on her way home from work in the evening. She checked in the morning to see that they were up and ready for the day and Karen would take a shopping list for things they needed. In the evening she delivered the needed items she had purchased during her lunch break and sometimes she fixed a meal when one was not prepared by her mother. This worked well until Karen began to notice her father did not shave or dress during the day and both parents were forgetting their medications. Karen felt more time and supervision was needed in their care but with her own family and job, she could not do it. Non-medical or personal home care services would be a good option for Karen to consider.

Before starting your search for a non-medical or personal home care company, determine what the care needs are and how much time each week will be required for assistance from the company. You may want to consult with the family physician and other family members as well as experienced social workers or care managers to determine needs. Most home care companies, as well, will help you do an assessment at no charge. With your care needs in hand, you are ready to begin your search.

The National Association for Home Care & Hospice (http://www.nahc.org/home.html) gives the following guidelines and checklist in searching for a home care company.

• How long has this provider been serving the community?
• Does this provider supply literature explaining its services, eligibility requirements, fees, and funding sources? Many providers furnish their home care clients with a detailed “Patient Bill of Rights” that outlines the rights and responsibilities of the providers, clients, and family caregivers alike.
• How does this provider select and train its employees? Does it protect its workers with written personnel policies and malpractice insurance? Does it protect clients from theft or abuse by bonding its employees?
• Does this provider assign supervisors to oversee the quality of care clients are receiving in their homes? If so, how often do these individuals make visits? Who can the client and his or her family members call with questions or complaints? How does the company follow up on and resolve problems?
• What are the financial procedures of this provider? Does the provider furnish written statements explaining all of the costs and payment plan options associated with home care?
• What procedures does this provider have in place to handle emergencies? Are its caregivers available on notice?
• How does this provider ensure client confidentiality?

If a home care company has not previously been recommended to you, ask for a list of previous clients and call for their experience with this provider.

Following up on these guidelines can help you determine the quality of personal care that is given. Many states license non-medical home care companies and require both legal and health standards to be maintained.

Read about individual home care companies in your area on the National Care Planning Council’s website www.longtermcarelink.net.    You may contact me, KatherineNixon.com for comprehensive advice.

Want to share your professional experiences and business expertise with other Aggies?  Hullabalog welcomes and relies on guest bloggers.  Drop me a note at msnyder91@hullabalog.com if you’d like to contribute some content. Once or frequently, it’s up to you

Here’s a rundown of my Final Four on the Cheap experience.

Thursday’s State Farm College Slam Dunk & 3-Point Championships
I hadn’t really considered going down to Hofheinz Pavilion for this event until my wife called and said that there was one of those daily deal emails that was offering half price tickets.  Hey, it’s part of the Experience, my 10 year old daughter and six year old son, both recently finishing their basketball seasons, would have fun and it’s half price.  So we went and had a great time.  The kids left with several autographs, they got their picture taken with YouTube sensation Jacob Tucker, winner of the Slam Dunk Contest

This is what you can do with a 45" vertical leap.

and my daughter even got to hold the Women’s 3-Point Championship trophy won by Cerie Mosgrove of Massachusetts.

Cost: $17.50 for tickets + $12.25 for drinks and popcorn.  Well worth the $29.75.

NCAA Final Four Friday (Team Practices & Reese’s College All-Star Game)
This was something I definitely wanted to go check out.  After all, tickets were free.  Even more remarkable, so was parking at Reliant Stadium.

On Friday the NCAA opened up all of the teams’ workouts to fans.  Each team took the floor for about an hour and that evening there was an All Star game featuring top seniors from around the country.  My plan was to head down there during lunch, hang out for awhile and go back to work.  But my Experience received a major upgrade earlier in the week when I happened to get through to Charlie Pallilo’s show on 790AM KBME during a trivia contest. The first two guys missed their questions, the next one disappeared and I was next.  I correctly answered (within the +/- 1 tolerance) the question, “How many titles has Kentucky won?” and was the winner of two tickets for the day’s events in a courtside VIP area,  passes to a hospitality area where we were served some pretty good barbecue (all-u-can-eat might I add) and the chance to hear Clemson head coach Brad Brownell give a little chalk talk and Q&A.  So I went down there with a friend and we had a blast during a longer than normal lunch.

Cost: $10 for a Final Four program

NCAA Men’s Championship Game
I wasn’t sure whether or not to be excited or disappointed for the city of Houston to host the first Final Four without a No. 1 or 2 seed.  I leaned toward disappointed because it would have been great to have three or four powerhouse programs in town,  but part of the greatness of this event is the whole underdog story.  You want underdogs?  We had two in VCU and Butler. I did not attend either game on Saturday and did not have a ticket for the Championship.  It wasn’t until Monday that I decided to continue my Final Four on the Cheap mission and try to make it to the game as inexpensively as possible.  This is where the Experience became lots of fun.

After work I headed downtown to park and take the train to Reliant Stadium.  No way was I going to part with $35 just to park at the stadium.  Well, after 6PM all metered parking spaces downtown are free.  I parked at 6:15.  Then I hit McDonald’s and had dinner for $3.86.  A few minutes later I was on the train headed to the stadium with a $2.50 roundtrip ticket.  Once at the stadium I started working the incoming fans and, um, “ticket professionals” for a ticket for the first sporting event I’ve ever attended by myself.  I start a little after 7PM (tipoff is promptly at 8:23) and at 7:45 I score a ticket for $20.  Not a great one, but I’m in.

Does this qualify as nosebleed?

My only remaining purchase is a souvenir drink.  $5.75 later, plus a little walking to find a concession stand that actually had cups in stock and I have a drink and souvenir.

While the game may not have been so great, the atmosphere was and I was thrilled to soak it all in.  I stayed til the end, watched UCONN cut down the nets and left after One Shining Moment concluded.  It was truly an awesome Experience.

Cost: $3.86 for dinner + $2.50 for transportation + $20 for a ticket and $5.75 for a drink.  Total for the Championship Game Experience: $32.11.

By the time the Championship Game was over I had attended several events and had a great time at each.  I’m looking forward to 2016 when the Final Four returns to Houston and I’m either doing on the cheap again or going all out.

Total cost of my Final Four on the Cheap Experience: $71.86.

Want to share your professional experiences and business expertise with other Aggies?  Hullabalog welcomes and relies on guest bloggers.  Drop me a note at msnyder91@hullabalog.com if you’d like to contribute some content. Once or frequently, it’s up to you.

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“Lack of Focus” has become a media hot topic. Recently, the Wall Street Journal and FastCompany ran articles about employees and families having technology induced ADD from emails and texting. These articles brought to light the negative impacts of America’s love affair with its iPhones and Blackberries. America’s hyper focused PDA’s has created an inverse lack of focus when working. Too many ideas, too many comments, feedback and newsfeeds coming at companies and employees at lightning speed.

Lack of focus can have a negative impact on product development. Companies, especially startups, often jump from one “great” idea to the next rather than stopping to review the big picture and see if these ideas really matter to product development. 37 Signals said it best in their first book, Getting Real, “figure out what matters and leave out the rest”. The quote is paraphrased, but you get the message. Lack of focus can delay product development and the product’s market launch. Focus is placing importance on having a strategic plan to ensure the company’s market strategy is not a knee jerk reaction to your competitors , the economy and internet chatter.

Before your company starts down the product development path – call an impromptu meeting and ask everyone “why” the company is developing the product or service. What is the basis of the “why”? Who will purchase the product? How will this product improve your customers’ lives? Will the product be short lived or evolve over time?

Over the years, we’ve worked with clients that lacked focus and jump from one product idea to another only to have competitors enter the market place before they could make their minds up. Staying focus takes discipline, similar to training for a marathon.  Companies must stay focused on what matters most to reach their goal of developing and launching  successful products in the marketplace.

To learn more about Tiffany and Dillon 5, please visit http://www.dillon5.com. Tiffany can be reached via email at tiffany@dillon5.com.

Would you like to share your professional experiences and business expertise with other Aggies?  Hullabalog welcomes and relies on guest bloggers.  Drop me a note at msnyder91@hullabalog.com if you’d like to contribute some content. Once or frequently, it’s up to you.

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Extra games and wider access to coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball championship (A.K.A., March Madness) on smart phones and tablets could increase workplace distractions that threaten to sap employee productivity during the annual three-week long tournament, according to the workplace authorities at global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

Challenger estimates that total online viewership during work hours is likely to reach at least 8.4 million hours during this year’s tournament, which begins with special qualifying games on Tuesday, March 15.  Multiply that figure by the average hourly earnings of $22.87 among private-sector workers and the financial impact exceeds $192 million.

The Challenger estimate is based on 2010 March Madness on Demand traffic statistics from CBSSports.com, the site’s primary sponsor.  Last year, the online streaming service attracted 8.3 million unique visitors, who enjoyed a total of 11.7 million hours of online video and audio (an average of about 1.4 hours per visitor).  That was up 36 percent from the previous year.

According to CBSSports.com, 8.7 million hours, or nearly 75 percent of the total, was consumed in the first four days of the Tournament.  Approximately 80 percent of the four-day total was achieved in the first two days, based on the fact that 3.4 million hours of March Madness on Demand was streamed on the first day of the tournament alone.

With CBS Sports expanding its reach this year by providing free mobile apps, Challenger conservatively estimates that streaming will increase at least 20 percent in 2011 to about 14 million total hours. Assuming similar viewership trends will occur this year, roughly 10.5 million hours of streaming video and audio will be consumed in the first four days of the tournament, with about 80 percent of that (8.4 million hours) occurring on Thursday and Friday.

Not wanting to be a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to enjoying an American pastime, Challenger, Gray & Christmas CEO John A. Challenger offered to put the 8.4 million hours of lost productivity in perspective.

“At first glance, 8.4 million hours of lost productivity seems like it would deliver a crushing blow to the economy.  However, it is important to remember that there are roughly 108.3 million people on private payrolls, each working an average of 34.2 hours per week, according to the latest Labor Department data.  So, the total number of hours worked by the American workforce in one week comes to about 3.7 billion hours,” Challenger explained.

“Over the three weeks of the tournament, the nation’s 108 million workers will have logged more than 11 billion hours of work.   The 8.4 million hours lost to March Madness is a relative drop in the bucket, accounting for less than one-tenth of one percent (about 0.07 percent) of the total hours American workers will put in over the three weeks of the tournament,” he continued.

“Basically, there is no measurable impact on the economy or even an individual company’s bottom line.  However, if you ask department managers or IT staff whether March Madness has a noticeable effect on productivity, they are likely to answer in the affirmative.  The situation is comparable to a traffic accident, which does not have any measurable impact on the overall economy, but if you happen to be stuck in the resulting congestion and arrive late to work because of it, it has an immediate and noticeable impact on your day’s productivity.

“For an office with 50 to 100 workers, five or ten people streaming basketball games will definitely have an impact on everyone else’s Internet speed.”

This year, the NCAA basketball tournament is expanding to 68 teams.  Four first-round games will be played on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 15 and 16 to determine the final teams added to the 64-team bracket that begins play with the second round on Thursday, March 17.

“These additional games probably will not add to the lost productivity due to the fact that they will be played in primetime, when most people are back at home in front of their televisions.  However, it could make filling out one’s bracket a little more complicated, depending on how those running the pools decide to incorporate the new format,” said Challenger.

Last year, Challenger estimated that lost productivity would cost employers $1.8 billion in lost wages paid to unproductive workers.  The firm did not reach the same conclusion this year due to a lack of updated market research and statistics that it typically relies upon to compute what the firm admits is a non-scientific ballpark guesstimate.

“This year, we simply did not have enough information to support what is already a very rough estimate.  In the end, however, we have already seen that the impact to the overall economy is so minute that it should not cause any concern.  What is more important is how individual companies address the issue among their employees.  Some companies, in an effort to keep employees focused and bandwidth unencumbered, have blocked access to streaming content of all types, including March Madness on Demand,” said Challenger.

Other employers are concerned about the legal and/or moral implications of permitting or even sponsoring gambling activities on company premises.  According to a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, about 33 percent of companies have policies prohibiting workplace gambling, but very few (six percent) have actually disciplined or terminated an employee for violating the policy.

“Rather than try to squash employee interest in March Madness, companies could try to embrace it as a way to build morale and camaraderie.  This could mean putting televisions in the break room, so employees have somewhere to watch the games other than the Internet.  Employers might consider organizing a company-wide pool, which should have no entry fee in order to avoid ethical and/or legal questions,” Challenger suggested.

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Would you like to share your professional experiences and business expertise with other Aggies?  Hullabalog welcomes and relies on guest bloggers.  Drop me a note at msnyder91@hullabalog.com if you’d like to contribute some content. Once or frequently, it’s up to you.