Every team needs a committed captain, and Peggy Slade-Sowders knows a thing or two about senior care management.

After 30 years working in the senior care field as a dietician, she suddenly found herself in the role of caregiver, managing her husband’s care as he recovered from a cerebral hemorrhage. This caregiving experience instilled in her a desire to help other families who faced similar situations, suddenly finding themselves responsible for the increasing needs of an ailing or elderly loved one.

Slade-Sowders now serves as the Director of Episcopal Retirement Homes' Living Well Senior Solutions (LWSS) program, providing professional geriatric care management in Cincinnati.

“The program is really all about promoting strength of people,” she says. “We try to help with whatever they most need."

Seniors depend on the care managers who serve them.

The LWSS approach on geriatric care management in Cincinnati is about helping seniors to remain as independent as possible, wherever they might currently reside.

Its care managers are not merely nursing providers, though the team has diverse nursing experience. The team is, essentially, the quarterbacks of their clients' care teams, coordinating care and services to ensure that every senior they serve keeps living a happy and healthy life at home.

And they can spend anywhere from one to thirty hours per month with each client, depending on how much planning and hands-on assistance they might need.

Geriatric care managers have saved many clients from injury or illness, and their families from incurring costly hospitalization bills, by intervening before minor health care problems or potentially hazardous circumstances spiral out of control:

• Proactively refilling prescriptions
• Getting clients to the doctor to ensure new-onset mild illnesses are treated early
• Taking careful care progression notes to share with physicians.

 “We [also] try to help with whatever [our clients] most need,” Slade-Sowders says.

So, in addition to ensuring clients' physical well-being, geriatric care managers also identify and serve their clients' emotional and financial needs. From planning trips at home and abroad to making sure that they get to continue enjoying much-loved activities—the LWSS team does whatever it takes to keep the seniors they serve happy, healthy, and independent.

Meet the Living Well Senior Solutions team of experts.

Betsy Babb, RN, has worked for 30 years in surgical oncology, gastrointestinal medicine and occupational health. Her experiences have given her a broad perspective on her clients' needs: "Geriatric care management is all about meeting people where they are," she said. "You meet people at an often-vulnerable time in their lives and reassuringly shed light on a difficult situation."

Donna Ebersold, MSN, RN, specializes in psychiatric nursing care. Her measured reasoning and optimism help her to patiently guide her clients' care: "Geriatric care is about engendering hope and providing gentle counsel to make decisions that create coherence for our clients."

Jeanne Palcic, MGS, RN, has worked 27 years in health care, including time spent in acute care nursing, as a nursing home administrator and now as the director of Parish Health Ministry.

Pam Ward, RN, has worked as a nurse for 39 years in a variety of settings, from neonatal intensive care to memory support. She uses her diverse experiences to help her clients easily navigate the increasingly-complicated health care system.

Peggy Slade-Sowders and the Living Well Senior Solutions team empower seniors in the Greater Cincinnati area to continue doing what they love to do.

Living Well Senior Solutions' care managers are Cincinnati's foremost senior care specialists. The program’s outstanding geriatric care management is not designed to run clients' lives; rather, it is built around the concept of support. Clients and families know that Peggy Slade-Sowders and her team are available and able to help clients continue to live well.

“Our services are personalized and very flexible. We respond to our clients’ needs at their convenience, not ours," Slade-Sowders says.