Imagine how much you will be able to meet the specific needs of this group that is very unique. For example, workshops could be offered on caregiving, financial planning etc available after or before your workout. After all you are already there and perhaps can plan to be there for an extra 30 minutes.

I even have a couple of possible names for the franchise that include:

Boomer Time Gym

Boomer Biceps

Boomer Fun Fitness

Boomer Workout Express

Here is a blog post I read that emphasizes the goldmine possibility in starting a fitness place for baby boomers.

Let me know if you create a start-up.  Meanwhile keep working out when you can.

She approached the receptionist and asked for a piece of paper and pen. The receptionist smiled and pulled out a very decorative pad and pen with the doctor’s name on it. “Here use this, the doctor wants all the caregivers to have something to record their questions and answers.”

The smile, notepad and pen made this facility CAREGIVER FRIENDLY!

Do you have some suggestions for making a facility or person CAREGIVER FRIENDLY?

So often the caregiver providing the information for a loved one is the only one who receives eye contact from the health professional. Now, it is natural to speak to the person speaking. But a quick connection with the person who is being talked about will involve that person no matter what the level of retention might be.

How does this help the caregiver?

Well, it makes the caregiver feel that they are not the only one involved in the decision making. Note that I said “feel” because it many cases they are the only ones who are making decisions. However, it also feels good to know that the health professional has not, in haste, left your loved one out of the discussion.

Take the case of Sally O who sat in a consultation with a doctor with her mom who was 89 years young with dementia. She listened as the doctor and his young attendee explained the effects of the new drug they wanted to use on her mom’s condition. She knew she would have to repeat every thing that was shared in a user friendly way later at dinner.

But Sally wanted the doctor to just look at her with some sort of assurance, some sort of hope. Then she would probably feel less alone in the process of dealing with her mom’s condition.  Her eyes looked to the doctor and shifted towards her mom to give her a clue to look at her. But the doctor just asked her to explain it to her again later.

But the young attendee saw her body language que and took her hand and said “I hope you feel better.”

Sally only wished that the young attendee was ready to open her own practice.

What tips do you have?

So just click on this link to find out more about this innovation event for caregivers.

We need all the help we can get, don’t you agree?

As a childless couple we do not have the foundation of children to depend upon for assistance. Yet, sadly, we know many who have children and do not have the needed support they need during their illness.

Read this insightful article below.

Health Care Reform Will Impact Long-Term Care

Robert W. Stock Contributor

AOL News
(March 26) — As health care reform became the law of the land this week, a huge bloc of Americans with a unique interest in the outcome sat watching on the sidelines.

The 49 million people who care for older family members were hidden in plain sight, as usual, quietly shouldering a burden that so often takes a heavy toll on their finances and their physical and emotional well-being. Many of them — I know a few — are opposed to the new health care law, even though it includes one of the most important steps ever taken to improve caregivers’ lot, especially those of the middle-class persuasion. Of course, hardly any of them are aware of that.

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, otherwise known as CLASS, provides for a national insurance program to help cover the cost of long-term care — something 70 percent of people over 65 will need at some point along the way. The premiums will be much lower than those for private plans, and you won’t get screened out because you’ve already had some health problems. Once vested after five years, enrollees unable to care for themselves will be able to claim cash benefits for as long as needed.

A health aide helps a patient at his home in Miami. The new health care reform law could “transform long-term care” and make it possible for more patients to stay at home, said the chief of the National Council on Aging.

If you’re rich, you don’t require much financial help with long-term care. If you’re poor and can no longer fend for yourself, Medicaid pays the bills, often at a nursing home. For the rest of us, long-term care — at home or in an institution — now requires that we, or our caregivers, choose from among some unpleasant options.

We can spend down our retirement savings until we’re eligible for Medicaid funds. We can protect our savings by taking out expensive long-term care insurance — it costs my wife and me more than $5,000 a year. Or, depending on how dependent we are, we can throw ourselves, or be thrown, on the mercy of our families.

My friend — I’ll call him Frank — was a retired lawyer and in great shape until four years ago. He had just turned 90 when emergency surgery laid him low for months on end. Then his sight and hearing began to go. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” his wife, Helen, told me. “His mind is fine. But he can’t get around on his own — he falls, even with a walker. He can’t make a cup of tea or shower by himself.”

For now, Helen can afford to hire an aide for a few hours a day to help with Frank and allow her to get out of the apartment. “James gives me a life,” she said. The future looks darker.

Surveys show that 90 percent of Americans want to age at home. Frank is no exception, but he never signed up for long-term care insurance. “If I couldn’t keep taking care of him, I don’t what I’d do,” Helen said. “If he went into assisted living, it would use up all our money. It’s very scary.”

CLASS, one of the legacies of the late Ted Kennedy, offers caregivers and care recipients another option. “If it’s successful, if a large enough number of people sign up, it will transform long-term care,” says James Firman, president and CEO of the National Council on Aging. “It will create a market-based economy for keeping aging people at home.”

That’s an important “if,” since the program, by law, must be self-sustaining. Premiums will generally be collected as part of workers’ payroll deductions unless they opt out. The younger the worker, the smaller the premium.

There is a vicious circle built into the current arrangements. Many caregivers must hold down a job and maintain their own separate family household while also watching over an aging parent. That kind of pressure can have consequences.

In recent studies, workers 18 to 39 years of age who were caring for an older relative had significantly higher rates of hypertension, depression and heart disease than non-caregivers of the same age. Overall, caregivers cost their companies an extra 8 percent a year in health care charges and many more unplanned days off.

In other words, the strains of family caregiving can hasten the caregiver’s need to be the recipient of care.

CLASS bids to crack if not break that vicious circle. Its benefits would make it much simpler and less expensive for families to make sure Mom gets the support she needs to be able to spend life’s endgame where she wants — in her own home. Good news for Mom, and good news for the future health of her caregivers.

In the last few days, I’ve conducted a poll of a dozen friends who have been closely following the health care reform debate. I wanted to find out how much they knew about CLASS.

Not one among them had even heard of it. It somehow seemed fitting that this major program, just like the caregivers themselves, was hidden in plain sight.

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