ABSTRACT
Private geriatric care management (GCM) is a profession that emerged in the 1970s to offer adult children and family members one-stop professional navigation to aging services, when there was no central point of entry for information about services to help with the then-ballooning aging population in the United States. The first challenge to GCMs practicing in rural areas is that of establishing a profitable business. GCMs are a for-profit service, not covered by Medicare. Profitability remains a major challenge for GCM businesses in rural America. The most financially successful GCM practice, based on a limited survey of 30 Aging Life Care Association members, is a mixed rural and urban practice, or a practice in an urban area that is co-located within a rural area. A GCM can also create a sustainable rural practice by employing telehealth technologies. An additional advantage of locating a GCM business in a rural area is that housing is less costly.
