A Geriatric Care Manager (GCM) is someone you can hire to look after an elderly relative such as a parent when they can no longer live independently and for example you live too far away to make regular visits to check on them and the care they are receiving. After my mom had a stroke my brothers and I, who live out of state, decided to hire a GCM. We hired The Option Group and Ellen Platt (who is the owner) and this unfortunately turned out to be a huge mistake. Ultimately we were very disappointed with their service. Not only did they display a lack of skill in assessing and reporting our mother's situation, but it turns out they have deceptive and unethical billing practices.
At $150 per hour (not including travel time which is billed at the same clinical rate), The Option Group with Ellen Platt is very expensive but we decided to hire them. The initial visit was two hours (plus). The next visit a few days later was almost two hours and included Ellen performing a BCAT cognitive assessment test. The following week one day Ellen brought a social worker, one of her employees, named Jackie Tangires. Jackie visited mom again herself later in the week. During that time we received an email per each visit. They reported nothing unusual or urgent.
The following week my brother, "Brad", came to town to spend time with our mother. On his initial visits he discovered that our mother was having a very difficult and challenging adjustment to the assisted living facility. He reported that he found a variety of problems including that she wasn't getting out of bed, she wasn't eating for several days and not participating in therapy/activities. He found this out by talking to staff (the same thing Ellen and Jackie were supposed to have done). My brother then called Jackie twice to find out if they knew about these problems. Jackie admitted that she had not uncovered these issues. Ellen having been there earlier in the week had not either, which is a serious error.
We don't understand how both of them with their experience, qualifications and credentials (not to mention charging $150/hr incl travel time!) missed the poor adjustment given the time that they spent there. About 2 to 3 weeks later when he was leaving town, Brad emailed both Jackie and Ellen to gave them feedback by detailing the situation, what he found, and expressed disappointment that they had not uncovered the issues as that is why they were hired.
Several days went by with no reply from either. I emailed Ellen saying that without a response we couldn't decide on next steps. The next day Jackie replied but it was unsatisfactory. She appeared to miss the point about the feedback. Her response seemed somewhat defensive, did not take any responsibility, and completely ignored the fact that she was there twice during the week.
The conclusion is that Jackie and Ellen are not competent enough to 1) accurately assess our mother's situation properly, and 2) to read and respond to a reasonably clear and direct communication. I'm also not sure why Ellen (the business owner and person of ultimate responsibility) left it to just Jackie to reply to the email directed at both of them.
We paid them $150 an hour to do just this - to find out the critical information, to act to mitigate problems, and report it to us. Actually given that they charge the full clinical rate for driving time (in addition to mileage) one is paying $300 an hour. We don't feel that our mother received the value of essentially paying $300 an hour for geriatric care management services and decided to end the service. In the communication I said that we should get a refund for the week's charges of $512 in which they failed to perform.
Shortly after that I contacted mom's doctor who said they never received the BCAT assessment which Platt billed us for. Not counting the test itself (which cost about $75), we were charged $165 for the test scoring and sending it to her doctor. I followed up with Platt telling her that, and asked her to send the test results (twice in a 3 week period) and never heard back. When someone charges you for services which were not performed that's usually called fraud.
We were charged a deposit of $250 which was for the last bill. However we were paid up at that point and there never was a last bill. I asked Platt a number of times to refund the deposit as would be expected and have heard nothing back. Usually when someone takes money from someone for services which were not rendered it's called theft. The irony of course is that they were paid by mom and they have defrauded from the very person they were hired to help.
The conclusion while self evident is also, you should do everything else you can instead to avoid the disaster and exorbitant cost associated with failure. I would avoid Ellen Platt and the The Option Group due to their unethical, unprofessional, unscrupulous and disreputable practices. read more
