New Medtronic benefits help ‘sandwich generation’ employees

Growing up, Jackie Corino remembers thinking her father Tom was indestructible.

"He was in law enforcement, always in great physical condition and very athletic," she remembered. "When he did the treadmill tests for work, the trainers used to tell him that he'd outlast the treadmill."

So when Tom suffered a stroke at age 65 and needed long-term care, the weight of the situation crashed all around her.

"I really couldn't believe it. He had always been so healthy. And then, we learned all the best-rated long-term health facilities in his region were full. I couldn't bring myself to put my dad into a facility where he may not get the best care, so I decided to move him in with us and we would coordinate his care ourselves."

Just like that, Jackie joined the "sandwich generation," the growing number of adults who are raising children and simultaneously caring for a parent.

Jackie was already balancing her career as a Hemorrhagic Procedural Development Manager in our Neurovascular Operating Unit while raising her ten-year-old daughter Stella.

Suddenly Jackie, her husband Steve, and Stella had two new housemates-Jackie's parents-and her father needed full-time care as he recovered from the stroke. He would require doctor's appointments and follow-ups. Referrals. Medications. Specialty visits. Physical therapy. Occupational therapy. Transportation. Coordination with insurance to pay medical bills. And more.

"I've always been a Type-A kind of person. I thought I could handle it all. But this was a lot. More than a lot. I just didn't have the time for everything," Jackie said.

Through her membership in the Medtronic ASPIRE resource group, Jackie had heard of a new company benefit for U.S. employees called Wellthy.

It's a concierge service that helps coordinate the massive bureaucracy that sometimes comes with healthcare. Jackie filled out the online application one day, got a call from Wellthy the next, and a few hours later, her Wellthy representative had already lined up her dad's first medical appointment.

"She said 'it's done. Don't' worry about it.' It was just such a huge relief and reassuring to know that a professional was coordinating all this wildly complex information, whereas I was just kind of flying by the seat of my pants."

Medtronic began offering Wellthy to U.S. employees during COVID. The idea came from a gathering of the Employer Health Innovation Roundtable (EHIR), where leaders from the world's largest companies look for ways to stay ahead of the ever-changing needs of employees.

"We didn't receive specific requests for this benefit, but we knew more and more of our employees were dealing with this issue," said Denise King, our vice president of global benefits. "So we set it up proactively. The response has been remarkable and very positive."

Global Family Care Leave

Medtronic makes another popular employee benefit, Family Care Leave, available to all of our employees around the world, even in countries where such benefits are uncommon.

That pro-active approach to benefits made a world of difference to Marko Perkovic, one of our sales reps in Croatia. His five-year-old son Nikola suffers from a rare auto-immune disease, and the medication to treat it affects Nikola's bone density. When Nikola broke his leg playing with other children, he needed to be completely immobilized for several weeks. Marko took six weeks of fully paid Family Care Leave to look after his son.

"It was so liberating, because I could completely focus on taking care of my family without having anxiety about work too," Marko said. "And I was really impressed by how easy it was to enroll. Being able to do this was a huge help for our entire family."

Nikola's broken leg is now fully healed, and his auto-immune disease is in remission. Tom Wright, Jackie's father, is also making a great recovery-he had to re-learn to walk and to speak. But he recently got his driver's license renewed and was the first person down the inflatable waterslide at his granddaughter's 10^th birthday party. Both Marko and Jackie credit their Medtronic benefits with aiding the recoveries-because it helped them get the best care possible for their family member when they needed it most.

"The word that I keep coming back to is gratitude," Jackie said. "I'm so thankful to have had a resource that supported us through the biggest health crisis of our lives. We all need a hand sometimes, even when we think we can do it all ourselves."

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