
LTC Bullet: The Tarnished Name of
Assisted Living
Friday, September 27, 2013
Seattle, WA—
LTC Comment: Our guest columnist for
today’s LTC Bullet is Liz Taylor. No, not that one. Rather, the
Liz Taylor who has raised the standards and written wisely about long-term
care for decades. After the ***news.***
*** AALTCI: The American Association
for Long-Term Care Insurance recently announced their 11th National
Long-Term Care Solutions Sales Summit will be held May 18-20, 2014 at the
Westin Hotel in Kansas City, MO. Over the past decade we’ve attended many
of these conferences and have always found them to be of high value in
terms of professional development through educational content and
networking opportunities. Early registration is only $69 and ends October
31st. See
http://www.aaltci.org/2014summit/index.html for further details and to
register. ***
*** IN THE MEANTIME, don’t forget
about the Fourteenth Annual Intercompany LTCI Conference scheduled for
March 16 to March 19, 2014 at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, FL.
Check out the details here:
http://www.iltciconf.org/. And if you’re contemplating an Exhibit
Booth and/or a Corporate Sponsorship, act now! The early bird deadline
for those applications is October 4, 2013. Contact
Jim Glickman for that. ***
*** ANNOUNCING: CLTCR Premium
Membership -- Center for Long-Term Care Reform premium members
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turnaround queries. Our Premium Membership is designed to give you a
competitive advantage in your long-term care profession. Your increased
knowledge of the critical issues and challenges we face in the field of
long-term care service delivery and financing equals improved professional
success for you and better LTC services for your clients and for those who
have no choice but to rely on scarce public resources. Premium Membership
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credit card payments. Contact Damon at 206-283-7036 /
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LTC BULLET:
The Tarnished
Name of Assisted Living
LTC Comment: Today’s guest columnist, Liz Taylor, has
worked almost 40 years in the aging field. As an author, former
Seattle Times columnist, and public speaker, she advocates for “aging
deliberately,” having coined this phrase to express the importance of
planning ahead and maintaining control of our lives as we age. She can be
reached at
lizt@agingdeliberately.com.
“The Tarnished
Name of Assisted Living,”
by
Liz Taylor
The Frontline PBS television program
about assisted living communities that ran July 30 promised to be a barn
burner. The media is at its best or worst (depending on your point of
view) when it shows blood and gore. From advance clips, this was its
intent.
I hate to sound jaded, but where has the media been lo
these last 50 years? In 1976, when I headed up a federal investigation of
the nursing home industry, images of horrible bed sores, people tied in
their wheelchairs screaming, and lack of warm blankets and heat in winter
were a dime a dozen – in nursing homes. There were no other care options
then; nursing homes were all we had.
Levels of care…
The same poor care exists today (though usually more
muted). Then, and now, there are exceptions to the rule — some nursing
homes and some assisted livings do extraordinarily good jobs. Further,
some older people don’t need the kind of extensive care that invites
abuse. The less care you need, the less you’re likely to run into
trouble.
But the rule remains the same: mediocre to poor care
exists in far too many care facilities, similar to a half century ago. The
culprit is also the same: the government says it’s in charge and tries to
control quality from “the top down” – through regulations. Over the
years, nursing homes have become one of the most highly-regulated
industries in this country. We’ve seen some quality improvement, but not
nearly enough.
During my nursing home inquiry four decades ago, we
looked at the very best providers. We figured, if we could find a few
excellent nursing homes — when the country was rife with awful ones — it
was possible to do better. Since then I’ve seen exceptional care providers
at all levels — home care, retirement communities, adult family homes,
assisted livings and nursing homes. Most providers don’t hold a candle to
the good ones, though all are operating under the same regulations and
conditions.
Conditions Can be Better
For at least ten years, we’ve known how to make care
better, a lot better. I wrote about this in a dozen or so of my
Seattle Times columns, giving real life examples. If you’d like to
receive a summary of their links, email me.
I believe that the only way we’re going to get better
eldercare is “from the bottom up” – arming consumers with the information
to help us make informed decisions, showing us how to “kick tires” to get
the care we need, alerting us to pay attention and do our homework before
there’s a crisis, and providing the tools to do the job – with regulations
as a back-up.
Imagine if the computer industry had operated in
lock-step to the dictates of the federal government and 50 states for the
last 30 years – where would it be today? Well, that’s what we’ve done in
eldercare. As consumers, WE have to become
educated and demand better services – the government will never be able to
do it for us.
So what happened to my 1970s nursing home investigation?
The knee-jerk reaction then, as now, was to demand more regulations.
Instead we called for consumer education and information to help consumers
choose care wisely – to give older people and their families huge amounts
of information about their choices – management track records, inspection
reports, staffing ratios, consumer complaints, staff turnover, and other
important facts.
The reaction: thunderous, widespread yawns. Consumer
education? How boring!
Selecting good quality eldercare is one of the most
complicated, expensive and emotional decisions most of us will ever make.
As the PBS documentary made clear, relying on lofty advertising
promises is foolish. As is choosing a place based on how pretty it is. We
have to do our homework, as we would for anything important – with tools
that don’t exist now. As 80 million baby boomers grow old, we need an
entirely new way to deal with the entire care industry. |