For Bob and Linda's parents, the family health advisor put together a list of top geriatric case managers and suggested Linda contact her mother's primary care physician to discuss the changes she observed in her mother's behavior.
Resources
The goal of the resources sector is to identify professionals, organizations and technologies that bolster the family's management capabilities, while reducing their management burden.
Bob and Linda realized their overall health management responsibilities exceeded their capacity to handle them. Their decision to retain a family health advisor and create personal health portfolios was a first step in upgrading their management resources. But they also knew they would need other resources as their family's health needs changed over time.
The health advisor set up a customized Web site that tracked and managed their personal health portfolios.
Furthermore, she created a master resource list of "quality of life" professionals that included medical specialists, therapists, trainers, nutritionists, health coaches and geriatric health managers. She also set up a master resource list of outside advocacy and concierge health service organizations
During the first year of Bob and Linda's new program, the family health advisor met both of them quarterly to monitor and adjust portfolio sectors and to measure the plan's performance.
Personal health portfolios represent another evolution in health advisory services for high-net-worth families. Not every family needs this level of support for their health management responsibilities, but for those who do it offers an effective model for organizing, understanding and managing complex health issues. In the right situation, it is a model ideally suited to help family members navigate the unpredictability and volatility of health and health care issues, and to protect their quality of life.
David Solie, MS, PA, is president of RiskTutor Inc., a provider of insurance underwriting solutions. He can be reached at [email protected].
Janet Solie, MS, PA, is CFO of RiskTutor Inc. She can be reached at [email protected].