UnitedHealthcare Resources for Family Caregivers caring for Aging or Disabled Family Members
February 9, 2016
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Kirk Pion is Vice President of Design & Development for the UnitedHealthcare Innovation Centers of Excellence. Dr. Vidya Raman-Tangella, a physician, heads UnitedHealthcare’s Innovation Center of Excellence. They describe the company, UnitedHealthcare, http://www.uhc.com/, and explain their work in innovation. They discuss issues and challenges experienced in America by caregivers caring for aging or disabled family members, and say why UnitedHealthcare’s Solutions for Caregivers are needed. They explain the ways in which the needs of American caregivers caring for aging or disabled family members' needs are being successfully met by UnitedHealthcare’s Solutions for Caregivers. They discuss gaps that caregivers may be experiencing, their feedback, and what is being learned from caregivers by UnitedHealthcare. They explain where United Healthcare is headed with Solutions for Caregivers, why it should move forward, its other programs, and why it is OK for caregivers to ask for help.
Family Caregivers Unite!
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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
Episode Directory
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
- 2/23/2016: How Class Action Lawsuits are Organized Listen Now
- 2/16/2016: Adoption Beyond Infancy Listen Now
- 2/9/2016: UnitedHealthcare Resources for Family Caregivers caring for Aging or Disabled Family Members Listen Now
- 2/2/2016: Challenges for School Children of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Listen Now
