Caregivers Resources and Information

Please click on name to go to additional resources for that area.

Advance Directives - From the Tennessee Government Website

You can use these documents to let your family and doctor know your decisions for health care if you become unable to decide for yourself. You can appoint someone you know and trust as your health care decision maker to ensure that your choice or decision is honored.

Download as PDF files to print and photocopy:

Visit The Website To Read:

Rules and Regulations for Health Care Facilities

Frequently Asked Questions About Advance Directives

PLUS: Advance Directive PowerPoint Presentation that can be viewed online or downloaded to your computer.

A Place For Mom
Free referral service helping families find nursing homes, assisted living, Alzheimer's care, retirement communities, and home care. Provides assessment advisors to assist in appropriate placement, case managers.

Care Pathways
Long Term Care Information, Ratings, Directory Listings, RN Care Managers, Elder Care Planning, Home Care Products, Articles, and more ...

Caring Conversations
Excellent materials that help family members reflect on how they have lived, what they want their last days to be like, and how to have caring conversations with one another about these topics.

Family Care Resource Connection
Over 1,000 reviewed and rated caregiving resources

American Geriatrics Society (AGS) Foundation for Health in Aging Launches New Web-based Resource for Patients and their Clinicians
The AGS Foundation for Health in Aging (FHA) has just launched Aging in the Know: Your Gateway to Health and Aging Resources on the Web (http://www.healthinaging.org/agingintheknow).

Based on the professional education programs of the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) such as the Geriatrics Review Syllabus (GRS) and Geriatrics at Your Fingertips (GAYF), this free, comprehensive online resource makes state-of-the-art information on the diseases and disorders of older adults available to the public.

Also included in the new online resource is a "What to Ask" series developed to help older adults and their caregivers initiate conversations with clinicians by providing them with disease- and condition-specific questions that they can use to guide their healthcare discussions. The "Health Care Decisions" section of the Web site provides information on topics such as community-based care, hospitalization, nursing home care, palliative care and rehabilitation. Easy-to-read printer friendly versions of all Aging in the Know resources are available on the site.

This new site provides linkages directly from pages organized by health topic to other credible resources on the Web such as materials from www.nihseniorhealth.gov, the National Institutes of Health's Web site for seniors. David B. Reuben, MD, AGS President-Elect, lead author for GAYF and a member of the Aging in the Know Editorial Board commented, "This approach will make it easier for the public to obtain the comprehensive, credible information that it needs."

Along with regularly adding new topics to Aging in the Know, the AGS Foundation will also be adding an additional feature to the Web site that will highlight and summarize some of the latest research from the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS). The goal of these summaries is to help the public better understand the often-complicated language of modern medicine and to help keep older adults and their caregivers updated on cutting-edge research in geriatrics.

The AGS Foundation anticipates that Aging in the Know will be useful to clinicians who care for older adults, their patients, and caregivers. It provides reliable educational resources that have been vetted by leading geriatrics health care professionals, and it will help provide the public with the tools to become better-informed consumers of care.
Aging in the Know can be accessed for free at www.healthinaging.org/agingintheknow .

Caring Connections

Caring Connections, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), is a national consumer engagement initiative to improve care at the end of life, supported by a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Caring Connections has implemented It's About How You LIVE, a national community engagement campaign encouraging consumers to make informed decisions about end-of-life care and services. The goal of the LIVE campaign is to provide a unified message across the country that motivates people to take action to improve end-of-life care for themselves, their loved ones, and their communities.

The central message of the LIVE campaign is to encourage people to:

Learn about options for end-of-life services and care
Implement plans to ensure wishes are honored
Voice decisions to family, friends and health care providers
Engage in personal or community efforts to improve end-of-life care

The Caring Connections site contains a wealth of resources, including advance directives for all 50 states.

Medicade and Medicare Certified Nursing Homes
Provides information relating to Medicaid and Medicare certified nursing homes throughout the United States. Includes information on payment and patient rights, and a nursing home checklist which will help you evaluate nursing homes. Contains a link to a Medicare Long-Term Care Planning Tool.

Safe Return
a nationwide identification, support and registration program providing 24/7 assistance for Alzheimer's patients (or patients with related dementia) who wander off.

Tennessee Assisted Care Living Facilities

A search page that will pull up lists of Tennessee assisted care living facilities, homes for the aged, home health hgencies, nursing homes, and hospitals.