How To Mange the Complexities of Elder Care – And How Cameron Brown Became a Patient Advocate in her 60’s To Help

How does someone with a marketing background make the decision in her 60’s to start a company that helps people manage the complicated and emotional web of elder care?

Cameron Brown’s first career was as an English teacher in Morocco, France, and Japan, followed by her second career working in product marketing. Then, after raising kids, she relaunched into the work world as a patient advocate, helping people with the many difficult issues surrounding elder care.

Many of us face the complexities of elder care as our parents and other relatives age, and are far too familiar with the difficulties, hardships, and headaches faced while managing living situations, health care, insurance, governmental agencies, and more. It can be overwhelming. That is where someone like Cameron comes in and why she founded AdvoCare Solutions (based in LA, but she serves clients nationwide).

I chatted with Cameron about her path to her ‘later in life’ career change, and what a patient advocate is and does. And don’t miss at the end of the interview Cameron shares 5 tips to help be prepared for if/when an elder care emergency arises, as well as resources to have on hand.

 

Cameron, what exactly do you do?!

I help people navigate the healthcare system, as well as the many other complicated aspects of elder care.

How did you get into this line of work? 

Family dynamics are a huge part of it. My parents targeted me as the one to shepherd their care. And that was not a choice I made! I have three siblings and I’m the only daughter. My brothers and their wives were all working full time and I wasn’t. And whether I was better at it because of my personality or my gender, that’s another question. It usually is women who get involved in this role though. We’re caregivers.

My dad held my hand, looked me straight in the eye and said, “Cam, I need your help”. It takes many parents years to acknowledge they need help. And I felt that was something I couldn’t refuse. And often, when there are siblings, you divide up the responsibilities in the best way possible. But the reality is, it’s never equitable. The person who manages the medical and health side ends up with a lot more of the burden.

So I learned a ton because I ended up managing their care and chronic diseases for ten years.  Our advanced health care system allows people to live longer and stay alive after battling one thing after another until the body finally gives up, on average over a ten-year span.  And that’s how it was for my parents. My mom had multiple sclerosis. My father had dementia. So I got involved with a lot of different medical professionals — neurologists, generalists, internists, OT’s, PT’s, speech pathologists, the VA, you name it. I was working with everybody. I gained a lot of knowledge and realized I was good at this. I liked it. And I needed an encore career.

In the pandemic, when I became an empty nester, I had more time for my parents than just putting out the fires of one crisis after another after another. At that same time, I met a patient advocate who totally transformed my mother’s life, and ultimately my life. I read an article about a man like my dad, whose wife had multiple sclerosis for 30 years. This man donated money to the MS Society to set up patient advocacy services so patients could receive 25 free hours of a patient advocate’s time. And because of this article, I set up and got help from a patient advocate — someone to guide me. And now this is exactly what I do, guide others through the process.

If you’ve been a healthy adult in America, you don’t know the intricacies of the healthcare system. I’ve been healthy my whole life, so I had no clue how to manage my parents’ needs. My siblings had no clue how to manage it. My parents had no clue how to manage it. Then I met this patient advocate and was enthralled by what she did for me and my mother. And I learned what she studied to become a patient advocate.

I enrolled in the UCLA Patient Advocacy certificate program. It took me two years because I did it part-time. It’s rigorous and academic. After finishing the program I started my business and since then I’ve had clients, all by referral. There’s a huge need.

 

And your clients have all different needs, correct?

Yes. A lot of people don’t understand what services of mine they could utilize until they are in a crisis and have a specific need. It takes a lot of courage, I think, to reach out to someone like me for help, someone who’s going to get involved in your messy family stuff.

For instance, one current client is 66 with an elderly mother who is 95 and legally blind from macular degeneration. The 66-year-old daughter is single, has no children, and no family members. The mother moved in with the daughter ten years ago, and that took over her life. She has been overwhelmed and hasn’t had a vacation in five years.  When she contacted me she was desperate for help. At first, the daughter said, “I just want to go on vacation’’ so I thought my role was to simply find respite care for a week or two.  As she opened up and shared more, I explained more about various options, and the requests for help grew.

Since then I’ve made sure the daughter has all the end-of-life care and legal documents in place and that she has full access to her mother’s financial accounts.  We reviewed and updated medication lists with the doctor’s input. I found her a local support group for caregivers like herself.  I explained Home Health and hospice and the differences between Independent Living, Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing.   Through this process of asking questions and actively listening, I came to the conclusion that the daughter needs more than a one-week vacation.  The daughter had the difficult talk with her mom regarding that it was time to move into a care community so the daughter could take better care of herself. And her mom agreed!

What stage are people in when they come to you?

It’s all crisis management. Maybe people put my number in the file when they are doing some planning, but they call when they are in crisis.

My last client called to say “My dad’s getting out of the hospital in two days. My mom says, sorry, I’m not doing anything. I’m too old myself. You’re it.”  And the son says he has no clue what to do. So off we go to figure it out.

Do you charge by the hour, or by the project?

Oh, 100% by the hour. Because you have no clue what’s going to unfold. No clue.

Putting all the pieces together is not brain surgery, but I have knowledge that others don’t have and that they need. I’m not a medical person, but I navigate families through the healthcare system to help them make informed decisions about their care. I also share resources. And it’s easier for me to do this than a family member because I’m not emotionally attached to the elderly parent like an adult child. The adult child feels the trauma that I don’t feel because it’s not my parent. Everything’s coming at them and it gets overwhelming.

 

Are there many patient advocates out there? 

Patient advocates are also known as Care Managers, and, yes, there are lots of us out there, but there’s more demand than supply.  It’s a relatively new field, growing to meet the increasing number of elderly adults who live a long time and don’t have family nearby.  Many specialize, depending on their background, specialties, and skill sets. Some advocates are generalists, like myself, but some are functionally disease-specific and some are skill-set-specific.

For instance, the MS patient advocate who helped me and my mom had worked in insurance for many years and had an aunt with MS, so she brought that to the table. I’ve spoken with other patient advocates who work with cancer patients and their families. One care manager I worked with was a former Physical Therapist. The patient advocate I admire the most does a lot of insurance claim processing in addition to a lot of other wonderful work.

Would you ever have envisioned ten years ago that this is the direction your life would have taken? 

No. I was stuck in the weeds after becoming an empty nester and my parents died. I feel fortunate I stumbled upon this career.

I love how I get to bring together a mix of personal and professional skills and interests. I’m organized, a good listener, compassionate and patient. I have a broad business perspective, I like helping others and researching new things, I know how to work with caregivers from other countries, I like to problem solve, I’m social, and I like talking with the elderly and learning about their lives.  Combining all that with my personal passion for health and well-being drives me to give my all to clients.

I love what I do and I do a lot of good for people!

Here is Cameron’s list of 5 things people can do to be better prepared for if/when an elder-care emergency arises: 

  1. Buy a book like Checklist for My Family: A Guide to My History, Financial Plans and Final Wishes by Sally Hurme to guide a discussion and to go through a checklist of what to record and gather into one place.  Having this in place when your loved one passes makes the winding down of the estate easier for the person responsible for that.
  2. Discuss end-of-life wishes with your parents or older loved one(s) long before it’s necessary, to make the discussion more comfortable.
  3. Store all the files and documents you have copied into a specially labeled box, so everything is in one place for the person responsible for closing accounts after your loved one passes.
  4. Be sure you have an Emergency Folder in place, with family contacts, doctors’ contacts, medicine list, brief medical history, POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment), and an Advanced Health Care Directive that can be sent with an EMT and your elderly loved one in an ambulance.
  5. Don’t be scared of hospice.  It’s a great free service available to those who qualify, even if they may live longer than six months.

 

You can contact Cameron at: cameron@AdvoCareSolutions.com

For more information, go to:  www.advocaresolutions.com

To find a patient advocate in your area, go to: http://APHAdvocates.org or ask your doctor.

 

Please also see our past blog on Elder Care Products to Make Daily Living Easier and Happier.

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