Care Coordination: The Key to More Long Term Care Insurance Sales

What is care coordination?

A care coordinator – often a nurse or social worker – acts as an intermediary for the family and an advocate for the insured. This person is a neutral voice that can help a family interpret the benefits of their policy, establish a plan of care, and locate a network of quality care providers.

For any family in crisis, this is a true benefit that’s intangible at application time, and which becomes quite tangible at claim time. Even though a family may be able to rely on insurance policy proceeds to pay the costs of long term care, long term care situations often create an extremely challenging and confusing time for families. Children may have different opinions of how to help their parents and may be concerned about whether their loved ones will receive care from reputable individuals or agencies. It can be a full-time job just to locate care providers and coordinate the care, and caregiver support services can alleviate a lot of this pressure and afford the family members the opportunity to supervise care – not coordinate and provide it.

Care coordination and caregiver support services are a true LTCI benefit, yet agents and advisors hardly talk about them when first discussing the LTCI option. Use it at the time of application to help put more coverage in force; if your client does make a claim on their policy, the support service will become a true value.

Brian M. Johnson is the director of business development at New York — National Long-Term Care Brokers Ltd. in Clifton Park, NY. He can be reached at [email protected] or 518-371-5522, ext. 154.