About Us
Ellen Makenna, CEO, Marketing Smart, LLC, is the producer of the Marketing Smart Round Table - Care Teams and the companion website, www.CareResourcesLocator.com. Makenna has always worked as a marketer, first in a sole-proprietorship called the Graphicopy Station, in Solvang, California, where she created ads for newspapers, magazines, and yellow pages.
She moved to Los Angeles, California in 1998 and began working in the healthcare field as a sales representative for skilled nursing facilities, an assisted living community, and home hospice care companies. In 2007, Makenna created a non-profit organization for board and care homes. She also began a website for the general public to be able to access information that she felt would help people navigate through the healthcare system more efficiently and with greater understanding.
"From my experiences helping people with admission to a skilled nursing facility, an assisted living community, or home hospice care, I knew they were about to learn to swim the waters of the healthcare system, the old-fashioned way, by being thrown into the river without a life-jacket, nor any understanding of the nuances of how the system works," says Makenna. "My job was usually to explain how their Medicare or Medi-Caid benefit would help them and when it wouldn't. It was the 'wouldn't' part that took them by surprise."
"My goal with www.CareResourcesLocator.com is that it be a place where people can find the answers before they even have to ask the questions. Our navigation topic, "Care, Healthcare and Related Terms - Defined" is really great for answering those questions." (Click here now if you have a question
"I also wanted www.CareResourcesLocator.com to be a website for finding providers of care, healthcare and related businesses that others would recommend. I want it to be like your neighbor that you ask who they know that can help you solve your problem, whatever it may be," says Makenna. "So no one can be included in this website unless they are recommended by another professional and they must provide 2 professional references and 2 customers’ references, also."
"I also have the businesses listed here gather into what I call the "Marketing Smart Round Table - Care Teams." "They meet together once a month to learn more about each other's businesses and cross refer with each other. This works out to provide the public with what our industry terms 'Continuity of Care'," says Makenna.
"Continuity of Care, means that an individual would be served well by a skilled nursing facility, for instance, and passed gently into the hands of a home healthcare company without any hitches, delays, arguments, or hiccups," says Makenna, "a goal our participants work hard to achieve."
In this quick 1-minute video, you can see Ellen Makenna, and hear what the Marketing Smart Round Table - Care Teams are all about.
