Considering a Nursing Home Can Strain Families and Business Productivity
Employees taking time off from work to care for an aging parent or loved one, and the associated anxiety and stress this causes while on the job, is costing companies billions of dollars. Online healthcare resource, MyZiva.net, offers valuable information that saves time for caregivers and money for employers.
Lake Success, NY (PRWEB) June 7, 2005 -- Employees taking time off from work
to care for an aging parent or loved one, and the associated anxiety and stress
this causes while on the job, is costing companies billions of dollars.
According to the American Productivity Audit, physical ailments associated with
stress and anxiety are among the top five disorders leading to “presenteeism,” a
term that describes an employee who is physically at work, but mentally
somewhere else. According to the audit, stress, anxiety, headaches, depression
and digestive problems account for the average loss of 115 hours of productivity
per worker or $180 billion annually.
“Caregivers for an aging parent or
loved one face many concerns, but some of the most stress-prone decisions
involve nursing home choices. The key is doing your homework to find the right
facility,” stated Ceil Strow, CEO of MyZiva.com (www.myziva.com), a Web site used extensively by nursing home
professionals. “It’s a wrenching decision that tens of thousands of people make
each year.”
That was certainly the case for Bonnie Gatlin, a New
Hampshire-based homemaker faced with making nursing home decisions for her
mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Ms. Gatlin is one of the millions of family
caregivers in America who provide for approximately 35 million elders in their
care. Many of these caregivers are or will be faced with the decision to seek
nursing home care for these loved ones.
In an effort to assist in the
monumental task taken on by caregivers across the U.S., the team that built
MyZiva.com also created www.myziva.net, an easy-to-use Web site that has helped people
across the country evaluate and compare nursing homes, understand the services
that a nursing home provides, and become more informed about how to pay for
nursing home care. The site averages more than 60,000 visits per
month.
Gatlin first learned about MyZiva.net when she was looking to
relocate her mother to a nursing home that was closer to her home and
specialized in Alzheimer's care.
“I was quite nervous and concerned that
my mother had the right facility for her special needs. I called some elder care
services, but no one could help me locate a nursing home,” said Gatlin. “I
searched the Web and found MyZiva.net. They provided exactly what I needed,
giving me information that helped narrow my search very quickly. Because of
them, I was able to choose a nursing home that met the needs of my mother.
MyZiva.net helped me find the best nursing home in southern New
Hampshire.”
MyZiva’s founder and CEO, Robert Abrams, a well-known
eldercare attorney and author, understood the need for caregivers who deal with
the guilt, stress and anxiety associated with choosing a nursing home facility
for a loved one. He believed that the Internet could provide a tool that would
answer their many questions and address their concerns.
“People facing
difficult decisions about long-term healthcare needed a place to turn to that
could at least provide them with extensive information, facility comparisons,
ratings, reviews and more in an unbiased, easy-to-use reference guide,” stated
Abrams when asked about his vision for MyZiva. The name, which is taken from the
Goddess of Health in Slavic mythology, will soon be featured among other sister
sites in an online community that Abrams calls “your healthcare resource.”
For now www.myziva.net
is helping America’s family caregivers to better understand their options as
they cope with the needs of an aging population. It is also making it easier for
them to function at work, knowing that the information they seek is now all in
one place.
About Ziva:
Ziva continues to evolve as a total healthcare
community and media company. The company is dedicated to advancing quality care
and empowering healthcare professionals and consumers by revolutionizing how
healthcare information is accessed and used. It is the publisher of the MyZiva
Web sites (www.myziva.com and
www.myziva.net) that deliver
information from a variety of public, private and proprietary sources.
MyZiva.com is accessed by thousands of nursing facility professionals every day
to manage administrative tasks, procedural matters and regulatory issues,
enabling efficient operation and freeing up costly resources. MyZiva.net is
accessed by over 60,000 consumers each month looking for unbiased information
about nursing home facilities.
Contact:
Arthur Germain
Marcomm
Group
516-829-0404
e-mail protected from spam bots
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/6/prweb247334.htm