If you’re a family caregiver who coordinates care plans with family members looking to help out, you know more than anyone how hard it can be to get everyone on the same page.

From keeping track of everyone’s availability to designating key caregiving responsibilities, coordinating care for your loved one may be more difficult than you expected. Not to mention, relaying health outcomes from health care providers to various family members can feel like you’re playing a game of telephone tag.

While care coordination can be very stressful for family caregivers, as well as the other supportive family members involved; there is a way that you as your loved one’s primary caregiver can take initiative and ensure that your loved one has the best care team moving forward.

What Is A Care Coordination Site?

A care coordination site can help you and your family members provide effective care to your loved one. It provides a stronger sense of clarity for everyone involved in the caregiving process.

Additionally, it’s a collaborative platform that can help send out an SOS during an emergency or health crisis. 

While sharing caregiving responsibilities with family members can be tough, creating and sharing a care coordination site with them can be a great starting point for everyone involved. Try holding a family intervention with the family members interested in providing care for your loved one - and stress the importance of utilizing a care coordination site moving forward.

How Does A Care Coordination Site Work?

Coordinating care with care coordination sites like Caringbridge.com is free and easy to use. Sites like these require the caregiver to set up their own site by connecting via Google or Facebook. The sites and their privacy settings - can be personalized for your caregiving community. 

Once the site is active, you can invite members, provide updates, request support, maintain a calendar and journal, access resources, and even add personal messages, photos, and videos that are all sharable. A special “what to say” section provides insight on what to write when words are difficult to find. 

You can customize the care coordination site to act as a medical home for your loved one’s medical records or health records.

It can also store key health care information pertaining to their:

• Health care needs surrounding a chronic disease or chronic condition 

• Primary care physicians, clinicians, and referrals

• The quality of care received from those primary care providers

• Nearby inpatient and outpatient facilities
  
  
• Specialty care resources

• Accountable care organizations

• Case management professionals

• Social workers

• Prescribed medications and supplements

• Health care services

• Medicare and Medicaid Forms

• An accurate list of all health care costs

• A list of hospital visits and readmissions

• Patient care best practices

• Community resources

• Delivery systems best suited for your loved one
  

Having all of this information stored in one place can help inform your loved one’s care team and essentially act as an informative toolkit for you and your other family members when trying to find any healthcare-related information about your loved one.

Remember that the information included can be customized to what you and your family members are looking to get out of the care coordination site. For example, if you had a bad experience with one of your loved one’s primary care physicians, you can make note of that in the care coordination site by stating that the primary care practice requires quality improvement.

Another way to personalize your care coordination site is to use tags like high-risk, high-quality, low-risk, and low-quality, to label different pieces of information within the site. The site is meant to be a fun and interactive way for you and your family members to connect over your loved one’s care plan.

There are several benefits of using a care coordination site with family members that are looking to be kept in the loop regarding your loved one’s health.

Instead of informing each family member separately via telephone about your loved one’s next follow-up doctor’s appointment, you can simply update the care coordination site to reflect their current schedule.

Your family members can then be kept up-to-date on that follow-up appointment and any other information regarding your loved one that was added to the site.

To create your very own caregiving site, here are four simple steps to follow:

1. Register your email address 

2. Create a personalized site name

3. Choose privacy settings to determine who can visit the site

4. Begin posting updates and allow others to contribute

What’s The Purpose Of Creating A Care Coordination Site?

Being a family caregiver requires you to be multidisciplinary and organized, especially when it comes to your loved one’s medical information.

Organizing accurate information about your loved one’s health care needs, go-to health care organizations, and overall care plan in one place saves time and curbs miscommunication. It also helps develop a supportive care team for your loved one by putting an effective care model in place that everyone can follow. Your loved one deserves the best care delivery, care plan, and care team possible.

A care coordination site can be customized with your loved one’s preferences in mind. You can customize the style, care settings, information you include, and the people you share your care coordination site with.

Caregiving can be tricky. However, if you’re worried about care management as it pertains to your loved one, then coordinating care via a site can make you and your family’s life a whole lot easier.

While the transition to using health information technology to coordinate a care plan for you and your family members may be different at first, it’s important to stress the importance of why having a high-quality care plan in place matters in the long run.

Developing a care coordination site where most if not all of your loved one’s information can live will help you and your family members act like team members in providing high-quality care for your loved one.

By simply checking the caregiving site for updates, any family member who has access to the site can be updated on your loved one’s whereabouts and health.