How to Have “The Talk” With Your Parents About Elder Care

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Elder care is on a lot of people’s minds. Whether it’s Baby Boomers starting to plan for their own retirement years or Gen-Xers starting to face the reality that their parents are aging, how best to care for senior relatives has become a topic of discussion at many dinner tables.

Discussions about elder care have become a topic in the financial community, too. In fact, William E. Ford, CEO of private equity firm General Atlantic, said in a recent interview that healthcare companies are responsible for significant innovation as they try to address issues of cost and improving quality of care in an efficient manner.

But all of this talk about elder care doesn’t make it any easier to have that discussion with your parents, or to navigate the many options available. Here are some tips for having that sensitive discussion.

Talk with other family members first. Give everyone a chance to discuss their concerns so that all of you agree on the need for the conversation. Decide who should be present. Remember, though, that if too many people are present, your parents could feel like you’re ganging up on them.

Pick the right time and place. If you know your parents get tired late in the day, you may want to have the conversation after breakfast or lunch, for example. If there’s a place where your parents feel the most relaxed, you might want to talk there. You know your parents best, so you can make the call on the place.

Have a respected professional facilitate the conversation. Your parents’ doctor, attorney, or spiritual advisor (priest, pastor, rabbi, etc.) could be a good person to help your parents make the decision to enter care.

Ask questions to direct the discussion. You can ask your parents what they would do if they fell at home or if they could no longer do basic tasks such as showering safely. “Asking questions and letting them come to the answer is a good approach,” says JoAnn Abraham, Vice President of Sales for Porter Hills Retirement Community & Services in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You may be surprised to learn that your parents are also worried or feel unsafe, and they’ll be relieved to know support is available.

Be prepared for denial. Nobody wants to admit that they’re getting to a place in their life where they can’t manage on their own. But remember, a successful conversation doesn’t necessarily mean you come to an agreement. Success, in this case, is just opening the door to further discussion.

Know what resources are available. Your local agency on aging, council on aging, state department of elder services, and other free referral services like A Place for Mom can help you and your parents come to a decision about what solutions work best for everyone.

With the steadily increasing demand for elder services, it’s not surprising that private equity firms like General Atlantic and Silver Lake are investing in A Place for Mom. I imagine that with the aging population, the need for A Place for Mom and other services like it will only grow in the future.

Have you had to have “the talk” with your parents? How did it go? Do you have any tips from your experience? Please share them in the comments.

Health and Business Execs Make the Case for NIH Funding

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At a time when the White House has been flirting with the idea of slashing billions from the budget of the National Institutes of Health, a group of executives, government officials, and academic leaders recently went to Washington, D.C. to make the case for the NIH’s continued funding.

The meeting, organized by General Atlantic CEO William E. Ford, involved 27 people, including NIH Director Francis Collins, Vice President Mike Pence, nine White House officials, and a cadre of top names in the academic and biotech worlds.

In case you’re not familiar with what the NIH does, it’s basically the largest biomedical research agency in the world. Its team of scientists does research on treating and preventing chronic diseases, curing infectious diseases, using new medical technologies to promote wellness, and healthy aging. The agency also provides grants to researchers at universities and other academic institutions. In other words, the NIH is a pretty important part of the U.S. health infrastructure.

Although Congress granted the NIH a $34 billion budget for 2017, Trump’s proposed “skinny budget” for the fiscal year 2018 (which begins in October 2017) reduces the NIH’s budget by $5.8 billion.

The point the White House visitors were trying to make is that private investment is not an adequate substitute for the NIH’s support for research at colleges and universities. They also said the odds of winning NIH funding for that research are getting slimmer and slimmer because the organization’s budget has stayed flat for years.

The group worries that Trump’s immigration policies are making it harder to recruit foreign scientists as well. University of Texas heart disease researcher Helen Hobbs said her Chinese postdocs are now taking jobs in China rather than staying in the U.S.

“Federal support for fundamental science in academia is the driver of national innovation, leading to new medicines that improve quality of life and longevity and make major contributions to job and economic growth,” said Stanford University President Richard P. Lifton. “Biotechnology took off in this country because of U.S. leadership in federal support for science. Our system is the envy of the world.”

Collins tried to drive the point home by noting how funding the NIH will check two boxes on Trump’s priority list: jobs and the healthcare budget.

Their tag-team approach may have had the desired effect. According to Ford, the two-hour meeting went well. “The members of the new administration we met with were very receptive to our message, and I’m confident that a productive dialogue has begun,” he said.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative President of Science Cori Bargmann agreed. “The message in the room was heard loud and clear: We need the NIH! And we need it now more than ever,” she wrote in a Facebook post just after the meeting.

People may have emerged from the meeting optimistic, but nobody talked about the elephant in the room—the proposed cuts to NIH’s 2018 budget.

Are the NIH’s funding prospects going to improve because of the meeting?  “I think time will tell,” Collins said.