www.EldercareDecisions.com Growing your Eldercare Practice

Those of us in the eldercare business are all too familiar with disaster planning for clients, whether we do business in sunny, hurricane-prone Florida or in the snowdrifts of the northern cities.  Most of us are aware of how vital this is, and we follow professional requirements to best ensure our clients' safety, and probably go above and beyond those.  However, it is equally important to consider the business and its plan for surviving a natural disaster.  When people rely on you for services or their livelihood (including yourself), this is not optional.

Here are just a few tips from my years in the care management business and would love to hear your tips to add to the list.

• Develop a Disaster Plan for your business just as you do for clients.

• Determine an alternative contact number out of the area for staff and families. Partner with a care management company in another state and use their telephone number for all communication if telephone lines go down. This would allow you to make limited calls to update the designated contact who could then make calls to families.  Take advantage of technology, such as text messaging which often works even when calls will not go through and plan with things like spare chargers for your (and your staffs') cell phones.
  

• Ensure you have a plan to pay staff during an emergency. Consider Business Interruption insurance which can cover these necessary expenses in the event a disaster is experienced and the business cannot pay. Talk to your payroll company to ensure they will continue direct deposits even without your approval or manual submission if it becomes impossible.

• Have copies of all important documents on a memory stick, but also in paper form. If you do not have electricity for an extended time, you will not be able to access the information on the memory stick. This information should include client and employee plans, as well as, insurance policies.

• Provide regular, periodic disaster training for your staff and role play scenarios.