Youthful Aging Home Health Care - News & Press Releases
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Lori L. Brosseau, L.P.N.: Nursing Instructor
Press Releases
Boot Camp for an Aging Brain: Exercise Shows Promise as a Major Advance in Treating Dementia
By: Roseanne Knorr
What's the most feared disease in America? If you said cancer of heart disease, think again.
What’s the most feared disease in America? If you said cancer or heart disease, think again. For adults over the age of 55, Alzheimer’s has that dubious honor. One out of every five older Americans – 20% of us – fear the memory-robbing disease. To provide context, consider that the next closest contender was heart disease that only 14% of us feared according to a MetLife Foundation Alzheimer’s survey.
There may be good reason for the fear of Alzheimer’s since the U.S. National institutes of health estimates that as many as 5.1 million Americans may have it. And according to the Alzheimer’s Association, that number is likely to nearly quadruple by 2050 to 16 million. One in 10 people over 65 have the disease; the rate is closer to 50 percent for those over 85.
It’s painful to the children of the aging who must make arrangements for the sufferer. But progress is being made in the fight against Alzheimer’s. Recent studies describe ways by which people can prevent its onset or slow the progression, especially if the diagnosis comes at an early stage. Yes, there are promising new medications though none are guaranteed to stop the progression of dementia. What’s clearly astonishing is the impact of brain exercise in improving or preventing mental decline of aging.
Brains Thrive on Exercise
One of the most encouraging discoveries is the fact that the brain can adapt its neural pathways and the right level of stimulation helps build and maintain brain function. The Neurology Journal reported that “on average, subjects who frequently participated in cognitively stimulating activities experienced 35% less cognitive decline than those with infrequent cognitive activity.” The results were reinforced by The New England Journal of Medicine in its report that “Participation in cognitive activities was associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, and mixed dementia.” The studies noted that those who frequently participated in cognitively stimulating activities had a risk of dementia 63 percent lower than that among subjects who participated less frequently.
These controlled studies by research professionals are replicated in real world results when therapeutic brain exercises are adopted by local agencies to help people fight memory loss and dementia. One local health care agency for seniors, Youthful Aging Home Health Care, incorporates a range of programs based on the newest studies designed to slow memory loss.
According to geriatric specialist and President of the firm, Nicci Kobritz, RN, NP, the program was specifically designed to target early onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia. “It’s vital to challenge the brain,” says Kobritz. “We’re constantly evaluating new research and applying cognitive techniques and it’s becoming evident that we can improve the mind’s ability for visualization, auditory understanding, concentration, and memory processing – all the factors that are essential to retaining and recalling information.” Brain Activity Becomes Entertaining & Social mental activities not only stimulate the brain; the results are multiplied by adding a social component. According to the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a study involving more than 1,200 people, the elderly who were mentally active were 2.6 times less likely to develop dementia. But the individual’s choice of an enjoyable activity appeared to be key to improvement. The activity might include reading, writing, playing a musical instrument, doing puzzles or playing games or learning a language. They all provide brain exercise; however, studies also showed that for those who were in early stages of dementia, stress was counter-productive so it’s important to choose activities the person enjoys.
In YAHHC’s Brain Academy, designed specifically to maintain brain function, participants enjoy games such as Dakim, Wii Nintendo brain games, and Posit Science based on each participant’s skill level. Friendly competition can help with both fun and socialization as groups compete.
Participating in favorite hobbies, delving into new interests, and expanding a circle of friends through clubs, sports and volunteering all help maintain brain functioning.
As scientists search for the magic bullet in medications, research on Alzheimer’s and dementia does show that a solution does exist to delay, prevent, or help moderate these dreaded conditions. Exercising the brain, as in exercising the body, offers the promise of a longer, healthier life. And as the saying goes, it can’t hurt.
References:
Neurology Journal (2003)
www.mayoclinic.com
www.caring.com
U.S. National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging
www.nia.nih.gov/Alzheimers
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Sarasota Magazine’s Biz Daily 941:
Local FSU Med Students Study Aging
Youthful Aging Home Health Care (www.youthfulaging.net) and the Sarasota Regional Campus of the FSU College of Medicine (www.med.fsu.edu) are partnering to train future physicians about dementia and the daily challenges of aging. Three FSU medical school students have completed three-week, community medicine rotations with Youthful Aging, and a fourth intern, third-year student is completing his internship this month.
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Maddux Business Report Daily News Wire – maddux.com
Tampa Bay’s Only All Business Newscast
FSU Med School Students Dive into Treating Dementia
SARASOTA, FL – Youthful Aging Home Health Care and the Sarasota Regional
Campus of the FSU College of Medicine are partnering to train future physicians about dementia and the daily challenges of aging. Three FSU medical school students have completed three-week, community medicine rotations with Youthful Aging, and a fourth intern, third-year student Matthew Ramseyer is completing his internship this month. The goal of the program is for each student to develop a ________________
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Gulf Coast Business Review:
The Daily News Source for Gulf Coast Business Leaders
Entrepreneurs by Mark Gordon, Managing Editor
Young At Heart
Nicci Kobritz began reforming her own health care business long before the industry became a political power keg. The result is a $4 million company that has grown revenues almost 60% during the recession. Nicci Kobritz has built Sarasota-based Youthful Aging into a $4 million boutique-style home health care agency by focusing on two facets for seniors: memory and mobility.
Nicci Kobritz has immersed herself on opposite ends of the executive spectrum: She has run a multimillion-dollar company and she has been in charge of a large state bureaucracy – the latter of which she says was enough stress to last a lifetime.
But Kobritz says she learned her most valuable lessons about life and business when she was in her 20s, long before she ran any company or state government department. That’s when she worked as a house-call pediatric nurse in rural Maine.
Kobritz drove around the state in a Jeep Wagoner, treating children of low-income families suffering from everything from ear infections to rashes to child abuse. She was so successful that the American Academy of Pediatrics selected her program as a national model to use in other states.
And it was that experience that led Kobritz to learn this valuable entrepreneurial nugget: Never settle. She learned that mantra by having to work with hundreds of children and families in poverty, many of whom just accepted their fate without putting up a fight, she recalls.
Indeed, Kobritz’ stubbornness is the base of how she built a successful niche business in the highly competitive field of home health care services on the Gulf Coast. Her company, Sarasota-based Youthful Aging, glams up the traditional home health care business model, which is built around sending a caregiver into a home to help a senior with the basics of daily living.
“I wasn’t happy with the traditional model because seniors have far greater needs than just sending someone into the home with a care plan,” Kobritz says. “It was obvious to me that seniors needed more.”
Kobritz aims to give seniors more through Youthful Aging, which she founded in 2005 after spending the previous decade running a traditional home health care company.
That company, a unit of national franchise firm Staff Builders, peaked in 2005 at 250 yearly clients and $3.5 million in annual revenues. It utilized a high-volume business model.
But even in a recession, clients have responded to Youthful Aging’s individualized and measured approach: Kobritz projects Youthful Aging, with a client base 50% smaller than the peak of her Staff Builders years, will end 2009 at more than $4 million in annual revenues. That’s a 23% increase over Youthful Aging’s $3.25 million in 2008 revenues, as well as 14% better than Staff Builders’ best year.
Moreover, Youthful Aging’s revenues are up nearly 60% since 2007, when it finished the year at $2.5 million.
Decision control
Youthful Aging, which has about 100 employees, is also the work of four years of never settle-style scientific and anecdotal research on seniors conducted by Kobritz. Her work included speaking with doctors nationwide who treat elderly patients.
The result of Kobritz’ research led her to come up with this formula when working with elderly clients: memory and mobility. Those two facets can put seniors on a path to a higher quality of life, Kobritz says, whether that means the ability to drive a car or simply the capacity to be able to go from a bedroom to a lanai.
“There is no instructional guide for agencies to follow on how to improve the ability of the frail elderly to function better,” Kobritz says. But the Youthful Aging philosophy, adds Kobritz, “enables us to look at seniors very differently.” “Now the client can remain in control at all times.”
Kobritz never expected to end up in Florida, running a boutique health care business catering to the needs of the elderly. Instead, her first love in health care was actually working with children.
That’s how she found herself driving around her native state of Maine in the 1970s and 1980s treating children. She later developed a program for the state on how to treat abused and neglected children.
Her work impressed some high-level officials in the office of Maine Gov. John McKernan. So much so that Kobritz was appointed to a cabinet-level position running various parts of the state’s children and families services department. She worked for McKernan, a Republican, for four years.
The job was satisfying but stressful. Says Kobritz: “It was some of the best years of my life and it was some of the worst years of my life.”
Kobritz moved to Sarasota in 1992 to both decompress and to help care for her elderly parents. Kobritz says she quickly discovered that she was “fascinated by the delivery system of home health care.”
So in 1993 Kobritz founded Home Health Centers of Excellence, her first go-around at home health care. She bought a Staff Builders franchise unit a year later and she ran that company for about 10 years, until she began researching ways to give seniors a better daily quality of life.
The quest to bring meaningful improvement to a senior’s daily life is the holy grail of home health care services. That quest is becoming ever more competitive on the Gulf Coast, as the industry has seen an influx of new firms pop up the last few years, many of which are local outlets of national franchise operations. Sarasota Memorial Hospital even has its own home health care unit.
Sue Wise, founder and owner of Sarasota-based Take Care, one of the industry’s leading local firms, says there is room in the industry for different business models and competition only makes her company stronger.
Still, Wise worries that some of the newer firms to the region are taking such a low-cost, high-volume approach that the quality of care will suffer. That in turn will bring down the entire industry.
“If home health care is done right, it’s not an overnight success,” says Wise. “This is not a Monday to Friday, nine-to-five business.”
‘High functioning’
That philosophy holds true at Youthful Aging. The firm’s program begins by working with the patient’s doctors. Youthful Aging caseworkers contact the client’s physicians to reinforce treatment plans and monitor medication and potential side effects.
The next three steps of the process go to the core of what Kobritz says she discovered during her research on home health care for the elderly. One step involves physical fitness, another step works on brain fitness and a third step monitors the client’s socialization efforts.
Youthful Aging has even formed a Brain Academy to help clients work on cognitive aspects of daily living, such as sensory input, attention and concentration. “It’s important to keep whatever mental activity (seniors) have left at a high functioning level,” says Barbara Brancatelli, the facilitator for Youthful Aging’s Brain Academy.
The Brain Academy has been so successful with Youthful Aging clients that Kobritz has brought it to a few nursing homes and retirement communities in the Sarasota area. Kobritz says she is working on other partnerships and programs that could be launched by early next year.
Kobritz says the other component that has driven Youthful Aging’s success, past the research into how to provide a better life for seniors, is what she calls “the art of practicing home care.” That art, for example, is the delicacy in how Youthful Aging caseworkers motivate clients and manage setbacks.
That combination of art and science, says Kobritz, is why she thinks her business model, despite its higher consumer costs, will outlast the competition.
“When you run a volume driven business, it’s difficult to do something innovative or creative,” says Kobritz. “Our system is designed to manage the more challenging and difficult clients.”
Health ‘reform’ worries executive
Nicci Kobritz has big plans in 2010 for Youthful Aging, her boutique-style home health care services company. Those plans include hiring more people, launching new programs for the elderly community in Sarasota and possibly expanding to new locations.
Her biggest obstacle? The pending federal health care overhaul currently weaving its way through Washington D.C.
“That’s what’s going to hurt the most,” says Kobritz, a former Maine state government official who worked in cabinet level positions overseeing health care services. “That’s what’s going to prevent me from hiring more people and my ability to continue to innovate.”
Kobritz, who worked for a Republican governor in Maine but considers herself a political independent, says the bill has more to do with a government takeover of the health care industry than real reform. Her biggest worry is that the cost of the bill, in terms of the business taxes she will be forced to pay, will make the recession look like easy living in comparison.
“If 60% of every dollar I make goes to the government,” says Kobritz, “it will impact how I can operate my business.”
Review Summary:
Businesses: Youthful Aging, Sarasota
Industry: Health care
Key: Seeking ways to grow during a period of uncertainty in the health care industry.
At a Glance:
Youthful Aging Year Revenues % Growth:
- 2007 $2.50 million
- 2008 $3.25 million 30%
- 2009 $4.0 million* (*projected)
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News Blaze:
Seniors May Think They Can't Do It, But They Can
Published: September 15, 2009
A most unusual home health care firm is marking its 15th anniversary of helping seniors do more than they think they can do.
When an aging relative gets a dreaded diagnosis or has a health crisis, family members often are thrust into their first experience with home health care. Often, says Nicci Kobritz RN, head of Youthful Aging Home Health Care, the caregivers simply react to problems, and expectations are low. Her people don’t.
She established Youthful Aging 15 years ago, intending to scrap the old model and start from scratch. A lifelong medical professional, Kobritz desired to create a longevity-based service that would leave her clients healthier, more mobile and more independent than they expected to be.
Ms. Kobritz spent four years researching how to promote longevity and better health outcomes. She spoke with several top doctors and researchers in the United States. She sought out Sarasota’s progressive practitioners and developed a five-point assessment for every client. Ten years later, Youthful Aging’s service combines traditional medical care with the latest health and longevity-enhancing therapies and techniques.
She has learned through day-to-day successes and failures that frail elderly patients can achieve a higher quality of life. Over the course of seeking out and testing the latest therapies with her clients, Kobritz has debunked myths about aging. She’s found that:
- Driving skills can be improved, even in seniors in the 80s and 90s.
- Even homebound or bedridden patients can do simple exercises that can stave off the loss of mobility.
- Dementia patients can do for themselves and stay in their homes longer if given specific cognitive and physical therapies designed with that aim.
- Professional art therapy can help Alzheimer’s or dementia patients reconnect with their former hobbies, professions and identities.
- The first place to look to determine the root cause of memory loss is in the patient’s medicine cabinet – some common prescriptions are known to cause brain fog.
- Depression – a leading cause of lack of motivation to exercise or participate in mind stimulating activities – is one of the biggest challenges caregivers face.
The company is headquartered at 7220 Beneva Rd., Sarasota, FL 34238.
Nkobritz@youthfulaging.net Telephone 941-685-9532.
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Artdaily.org:
Specialized Art Therapy can Help Alzheimer's Patients Reconnect with their Identities
Art therapy – not arts and crafts, but truly specialized art therapy – can help Alzheimer’s patients reconnect with their identities and life stories. It can open the floodgates of communication when dementia patients have stopped talking. It can support the recovery of stroke patients as they regain mastery and a sense of control.
A firm called Youthful Aging Home Health Care employs the only certified art therapist in the Sarasota-Manatee area who works with Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. Registered Art Therapist, Poppy Scheibel, utilizes watercolor, clay, embroidery, mixed media and even origami in order to gain insight into the minds of her clients, some of whom are in their 90s.
Scheibel has a master’s degree in art therapy and is accredited by the Art Therapy Credentials Board. She’s president-elect of the Florida Art Therapy Association and a faculty member at Ringling College of Art and Design, where she teaches psychology of the arts.
Youthful Aging, a boutique home health care service dedicated to helping its clients reach their maximum physical and intellectual potential, established its art therapy program in 2006. President and CEO, Nicci Kobritz, says that an individually tailored art therapy program can impact other aspects of patients’ lives as well as family relationships. “Dementia patients travel and live in a different world. Their art gives them something they can engage in and connect with,” Kobritz says.
One of Scheibel’s clients, a former surgeon, was able to work with clay and sculpting tools to make precise carvings. Another, a strongly maternal woman who derived a sense of purpose from mentoring and teaching, taught Scheibel how to crochet.
“In the Alzheimer’s mind, the person can only keep focus for a few moments. When we get into this creative art process, the flow of the media almost mirrors what we want to create in the cognitive mind. They get this mind-hand connection and they are able to stay focused for longer periods of time. My goal is to stretch that state of cognitive clarity,” Scheibel says.
Youthful Aging Home Health Care was established in Sarasota in 1999 by Ms. Kobritz. The boutique practice serves clients in need of both short-term and long-term, 24/7 home health services. Youthful Aging’s service model, which was developed by Kobritz, is individually tailored to each client to manage chronic health conditions, restore optimum physical and mental dexterity and improve overall quality of life. Youthful Aging’s goal is to enable clients to remain independent in their homes and to do for themselves.
The company is headquartered at 7220 Beneva Rd., Sarasota FL 34238, nkobritz@youthfulaging.net. Telephone 941-685-9532.
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Youthful Aging delivers client centered care to seniors living in Sarasota and Bradenton Florida. Our Registered Nurses work with Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA's). Youthful Aging Companions deliver proactive wellness services in addition to meeting basic senior citizen needs. Youthful Aging's progressive approach to home health care enables greater independence as long as possible.
We give recommendations for nursing home care AND you can receive all the services of nursing home care in your own home.
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