Do You Know Where Your Parents Are?: An Insider's Guide To Choices and Options In Senior Health Care (Paperback)

by JoAnn Westbrook (Author)
Key Phrases: health care facility, health care surrogate, indoor area, Nursing Home, Assisted Living, Smooth Transition (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Finally a guide to senior healthcare that is readable, comprehensive, user-friendly, authoritative, and current. In its content, format, andtimeliness, Do You Know Where Your Parents Are? surpasses anything else on the market and fills a void. For the first time a true insider, a healthcare facility administrator, offers distressed families who have read the headlines about institutional abuse and neglect, the crucial information they need to choose the best health care option for a loved one. In clear, no-nonsense prose with the use of easy-to-use removable checklists, JoAnn Westbrook draws from ten years experience to take a family step by step through the maze of modern health care options from aging in place at home to dementia care facilities. With 77 million Baby Boomers who have aging parents and are on the way to retirement themselves, the time for this unique guide is now. To demonstrate how to interpret one of the most important tools for assessing a facility-the complicated state survey rating system. Ms. Westbrook has included a chapter on how to decipher a state survey. This has become especially relevant since for the first time, the federal government began publishing the survey results in the press-but not an explanation of how to interpret the results. Having worked as an administrator in Assisted Living, Nursing Home, and Specialty Care facilities, she has first-hand knowledge of the key criteria for measuring the quality of a healthcare facility as well as the crucial indicators that a facility is substandard or declining in quality. She alsobrings an insider's experience of negotiating the bureaucratic healthcare maze from her tenure as a state regional director for a large healthcare conglomerate. While her sections on healthcare facilities evolved from her experience as an administrator, the sections on aging in place at home are based, in part, on her experience assisting both her parents to age in place at home.

About the Author
My journey into Health Care began when my mother was diagnosed with Bone Cancer and my family and I were compelled to work our way through a maze of health care dilemmas. I was in college at the time and the gravity of my reality at home pulled me toward a degree in Gerontology. After graduation I became a Licensed Nursing Home Administrator, working in Nursing Homes, Assisted Living, Specialty Care for Dementia, Continuing Care Retirement Communities and Independent campuses. I have designed and developed a Special Care Unit within a Nursing Home; for which I wrote the programs, policies and procedures to meet the state guidelines, and have actedas a designated trainer for teaching Administrators nationwide for a large corporate entity. It has been my experience not only as an Administrator but also as an Elder Advocate to see how challenging it is to the general public to know what questions to ask and where to go foranswers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: AuthorHouse (May 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1410767353
• ISBN-13: 978-1410767356
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,640,172 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Do You Know Where Your Parents Are?, February 3, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Do You Know Where Your Parents Are?: An Insider's Guide To Choices and Options In Senior Health Care (Hardcover)

This book gives me the opportunity to take the checklists with me as I visit facilities. I am pleased to see an administrator talking about what is really going on in facilities with such concern and compassion. I have seen several other books and I must say the design of this book is easy to follow and the large print is perfect. Overall I feel it is the best overall review of someone living at home or living in a facility. I loved it!