Using BaseCamp To Coordinate Family Caregiving

There are some services being created to help families coordinate caregiving for someone who's getting too old (Senior) to care for themselves, or who has a Chronic illness.

But BaseCamp can be used for this as well. (Idea from 2007, still true in 2022.)

They have a free plan if you just want to manage 1 "project". We'll treat this process of caregiving as a project.

You can create a People record for anyone who will be using the space (family Care-Givers), or who you just want to keep track of: Physicians, HomeCare workers and companies, pharmacists, etc. (don't expect any HealthCare professionals to actually use the system).

For scheduled events ("Take mom to dialysis") you can create a Milestone. Unfortunately these can only be assigned (whole) dates (not times), so specific times have to be put in the Title of the Milestone. You can subscribe to the Milestones in Mozilla Calendar or MacOs X ICal. Milestones can be assigned to people, so you know who has committed to each task.

For undated tasks ("File insurance claim for Feb23 hospital visit") you can create To Do Lists. Again, each task can be Assigned to anyone on the People list.

You can create Message threads to discuss things. You can create custom categories to organize the threads. I'm not sure how much I'd use these. Unfortunately, messages can't be attached to Milestones or Tasks, which is how I'd want to use them.

There's an API, but I don't see what kind of groups would feed anything in. I've toyed with the idea of pushing QuietCare alerts into the system, but why? Perhaps as To Do List items, to trigger someone to talk to the cared-for and decide what to do? (Again, having a Message thread tied to the To Do would make a lot of sense.) Then maybe create a Message thread for each alert? Again, I'm not sure how much that provides...

You could do this stuff with a Wiki, but having the Structured Data is nice. (Would a Structured Wiki be nice?)

Apr'2012: Hopefully, you can have others help with tasks such as doctors appointments, picking-up prescriptions, getting groceries, doing laundry, or one of the many responsibilities caregivers are charged with. A new website, https://caretogether.com/, aims to make the caregiving process easier. It offers a free forum for caregivers and their families to share advice and offer support.

• built by BrightStar Care
• 2022 still there