Support and payment for family caregivers
Do you provide daily care for a family member or friend on Medicare? If so, you could be one of 50 family caregivers to get paid a stipend—up to $300/month—based on your participation in a new family caregiver support program.
This free program, developed in partnership with The Jewish Association on Aging, is available in Allegheny and Westmoreland Counties.
We value your care and your participation
Eligible family caregivers can receive up to $300/month, with payments beginning after you complete your first training modules. Payments are based on the program tasks you complete, including:
- viewing free caregiver training videos relevant to your loved one’s care needs
- filling out regular Family Caregiver Check-in forms
- joining virtual “huddles” with your dedicated Care Navigator—an experienced social worker—and a cohort of other family caregivers
- participating in occasional surveys & questionnaires to help us improve the RubyWell program
- completing certain care tasks for the person you care for
RubyWell designed this 12-month program in partnership with The Jewish Association on Aging and Integra strategies. Our goal is to ease family caregiver strain, reduce avoidable hospital visits, and lower overall cost of care. Then bring it to families in more counties and states across the country.
The program is funded by a generous grant awarded to The Jewish Association on Aging by The Richard King Mellon Foundation.
How the Family Caregiver program works
RubyWell guides you through the process, step by step, from checking eligibility to providing care.
Check eligibility
JAA Home Health begins providing Medicare-covered home health services for your eligible loved one
View caregiver training videos relevant to your loved one’s care needs
Receive support from your dedicated Care Navigator and a community of family caregivers
Provide care and updates on your loved one’s health status and occasionally share your feedback on the program
Monthly stipend payments begin after you finish your first online training modules.
You already play a central role on your loved one’s care team
With consistent support and a dedicated Care Navigator, you’ll have the resources you need to help prevent avoidable health events that tend to happen between doctor or home health visits. That saves you and our health system time and money, and helps keep your loved one out of the hospital.
It’s valuable work and we want to compensate you for it.
We have room for 50 families in this program.
Find out if yours can be of them today.
Who can participate?
The person you care for must live in Allegheny or Westmoreland County. And you both must meet certain requirements to qualify for this program.
Can pass a criminal background check
Connect and collaborate with your Care Navigator on a weekly basis
Participate in user interviews, testing, & surveys
Willing to gain valuable information from training videos relevant to your loved one's care needs
Covered by Original Medicare (Parts A & B) or a participating Medicare Advantage plan
Unable to leave home without assistance due to health condition
Health condition requires skilled care (nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, or speech therapy)
Consent to participate in the program and securely share their PHI with RubyWell and our home health and training partners
Access to internet service where they live
Tech you can trust
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FAQs
This free program, developed by RubyWell and the Jewish Association on Aging (JAA), helps ease the strain of caregiving five ways:
- Family Caregiver Support
JAA matches you with a Care Navigator—an experienced social worker who can help guide you through the healthcare maze of doctors, health plans, and appointments. They’ll help coordinate your loved one’s care with their providers so you’re all on the same page. They’ll refer you to valuable resources in your community. You’ll meet with them virtually every week so they can get a sense for how you’re doing and if you need any help. You can also share concerns or questions with them at any time.
- Training
RubyWell gives you access to free training videos that are relevant to your loved one’s health condition and care needs. So you’ll learn the best ways to provide the care they need in order to avoid preventable trips to the hospital. You’ll also learn how to recognize changes in your loved one’s health that could suggest the need to escalate care, so you know how to catch something before it becomes a dangerous health situation. The videos are short and pretty easy to fit into a busy schedule.
- Community Building
You’ll join a cohort of other family caregivers in your area who are facing a lot of the same challenges you are. You’ll meet virtually every week, in a meeting facilitated by your Care Navigator. You may even choose to connect with each other on your own time whenever you feel like you need a little empathy, a chance to vent, or share a laugh. We all know caregiving comes with the full range of emotions.
- Compensation
RubyWell will pay you a stipend of up to $300/month based on your engagement in the program. Joining regular check-ins with the Care Navigator and your cohort, completing training videos, filling out regular check-in forms, sharing feedback on our program, completing surveys, and other program activities all count as engagement. The more you engage, the more likely the person you care for will have better health outcomes, and the more confident you’ll probably feel as their caregiver. If time is more valuable to you than money, you can choose to receive non-cash compensation, such as respite care or housekeeping assistance. The value of any non-cash compensation just can’t be greater than the value of the cash stipend you would be eligible to receive.
- Medicare-covered home health services through JAA Home Health
The person you care for will receive professional home health services from our program partner, JAA Home Health, a respected, Medicare-certified home health agency. This means a skilled nurse or therapist from JAA will bring medically-necessary care right to your loved one’s home. JAA Home Health is the only home health agency participating in this Family Caregiver Program. By enrolling in the program, your loved one is choosing to receive home health services from JAA.
No, there’s no cost for the Family Caregiver program. Family caregivers already have enough expenses!
And for Original Medicare (Parts A and B) members, there’s no cost for the home health services they're eligible for. Original Medicare covers medically-necessary home health services for eligible members.
Medicare Advantage plans (Part C) are required to cover the same services as Original Medicare, but they may charge a copay, and you may need prior authorization for care.
Funding for this program is provided by a generous grant awarded to The Jewish Association on Aging by The Richard King Mellon Foundation, to better support older adults and their family caregivers in this region. By tracking patient outcomes, we plan to show the positive impact that this type of care model can have for families and health plans. Based on that impact, we plan to expand this program throughout the state and the country.
Eligible family caregivers can receive a stipend of up to $300/month for continued participation in the 12-month program. Payments begin after you complete your first online training modules. The monthly stipend amount depends on your engagement with Care Navigator huddles, check-ins, additional training videos relevant to your loved one's care needs, requests for input on your experience, and other program activities to help us optimize our program. If time is more valuable to you than money, you can choose to receive non-cash compensation, such as respite care or housekeeping assistance. The value of any non-cash compensation just can’t be greater than the value of the cash stipend you would be eligible to receive.
The free, online training videos RubyWell shares with you range in length from 10 - 20 minutes each. So they’re easy to fit into a busy day. And they're packed with information that even seasoned family caregivers have found helpful. At the end of each video, there are some questions you’ll need to answer to get credit for watching the video.
When you first join the program, you'll be asked to complete a series of initial training videos in order to start receiving support from your Care Navigator and earning monthly stipend payments. These videos walk you through topics like:
- how the program works and how we expect you to engage with us
- how to recognize changes in your loved one’s behavior or health that could lead to a health crisis
- when to call the home health agency vs. when to call an ambulance
Throughout the rest of the program, RubyWell will provide you with occasional training videos that are relevant to your loved one’s particular health condition(s) and care needs.
You’ll be matched with a dedicated Care Navigator for the duration of the program. Your Care Navigator is an experienced social worker who is employed by JAA, our partner home health agency. Your Care Navigator partners closely with the home health team to ensure seamless and frequent communication.
The support they provide includes:
- facilitating regular, virtual “caregiver huddles,” when they will check-in with you on your loved one’s condition and your own needs or concerns as you provide care.
- coordinating early intervention and care transitions to help you prevent avoidable hospitalizations
- following up with you after any hospitalization to support a smooth and safe transition back home
- helping you understand what health signals to watch for and how to communicate concerns to the home health team
- conducting home visits to help onboard you and your loved one to the program, build relationships, observe how care is provided and received in order to see if additional support may be helpful, and help you navigate care pathways and resources
- helping you understand and make the most of the support, training, and stipend payments available to you through this program
- help with problem-solving, navigating to resources, planning next steps, and overcoming barriers to successful care. This could be anything from arranging for a handyman to install a grab bar to finding respite care so you can care for yourself.
Home health care includes a range of medical and therapeutic services delivered in a patient’s home. Its goal is to promote, maintain, or restore health; slow a patient’s decline; or to help manage the effects of illness, injury, or disability.
To participate in the Family Caregiver Program, the person you care for must qualify for Medicare-covered home health services. And those services must be provided by our program partner, JAA Home Health.
Medicare covers home health services for beneficiaries who are homebound, at risk for future hospitalizations, and meet criteria for needing medical care from a skilled nurse or therapist at home.
Medicare considers a person homebound if both of these statements are true:
- They rarely leave home and when they do, it's just for short appointments or special events.
- Leaving home is difficult due to shortness of breath, pain, limited stamina, or other reasons.
And one of these statements is true:
- They require an assistive device (e.g., wheelchair, walker, crutches, cane), special transportation, or personal assistance to leave home due to illness or injury.
- Their doctor has recommended that they not leave home because of their condition.