You better shop around.... true life assisted living horror stories

I found this article on the Wall Street Journal website that I thought was well worth sharing. It’s an oldie but a goodie (published back in 2001.)

It talks about assisted living nightmare stories.

Here’s my take on the industry, which hasn’t changed much since the article was written. Most people move into assisted living for one reason: It is a more affordable and appealing alternative to a nursing home. That is decidedly not what the industry was set up to do. Assisted living communities were intended to be safe alternatives to toughing it out at home for folks who needed a little extra help with meal preparation, housekeeping, and, for some, remembering to take their medication.

Great idea, great model. The problem with it was that it wasn’t worth giving up your home and paying $4,000 a month for that, at least not for enough people to keep the places full. So what’s a poor entrepreneur to do? I guess there are two choices. The first would be to tighten up your operation, and get that monthly price low enough to make it a good deal for people (I didn’t observe a lot of that happening). The second, and more frequently taken tactic was to admit customers who had more needs than you were intended to serve, and to figure out a way to meet those needs.

Paying $4,000 a month for a small room in a place that looks like a Victorian Mansion is most appealing when it is compared to paying $10,000 a month for a semi-private room that looks more like a hospital (your local nursing home.) And so, the compromises began, and assisted living communities walked the tightrope of meeting the regulatory requirements of the industry, and scooping up folks that previously would have moved into a long term care facility.

This had the consequence of making the resident profile of both types of facilities, long term care and assisted living, more acutely needy than they were set up to serve.

And so, that’s the situation we find ourselves in. Assisted living communities that look like they’re serving a nursing home population, and getting lousy reviews from many in the process. Nursing Homes without the higher functioning residents they used to have, with an ever more acute and helpless group of residents, many of whom are no longer paying privately, but relying on Medicaid to pay for their costly care. And, as any nursing home administrator will happily tell you, Medicaid reimbursement barely covers the cost of the care these folks require, further exacerbating the problem.

I don’t mean to paint all assisted living communities or nursing homes with the same broad brush. There are some good ones out there, but sadly, not as many as there appear to be bad ones.

I remain convinced that the best way to avoid both of these bad choices is moving to a service enhanced independent living retirement community that has resources in place to enable you to age in place even if you do drop the turkey.

Hold onto that turkey.