Blog

Adult day care allows families to enjoy quality time together, while still ensuring that your elderly family members get the care they need. It is a step between full-time home care and placing your loved one in an assisted living community. The service allows families the peace of mind of knowing their loved one is well attended while they continue with their regular professional obligations. If you are looking for an adult day care center, or you are thinking of incorporating one into your current assisted living facility, here is a list of services that clients and customers will expect to find.

The Services of An Adult Day Care Facility

With this, or any business, it’s important to have a focus on security, well-being, and convenience for your customers and clients. A courteous, knowledgeable, and professional staff is fundamental to the needs of any business. Senior care facilities always find the greatest level of sustained success when they are cognizant of the concerns and expectations of the families they serve. The more individuals can see that you are making a strong, positive contribution to the community, the more your business will flourish.

There are many services you can implement in a senior care facility. Certain care expectations are fundamental to client health and cannot be overlooked, but there are other, optional amenities that you might implement to make your business more attractive than those of your competitors. Here is a starting list of the services you should offer.

Essential Living Assistance

Many seniors need help with things such as eating, walking, and using the restroom. It is imperative that your employees are well versed in first aid and are up to date in their training for specific emergency services that are likely to be needed with the elderly. Living assistance also entails keeping track and administering medications. It’s important to maintain an accurate schedule and always ensure good communication with the families to ensure there is no accidental overlap of medication.

Podiatry Care

Podiatry care represents highly effective, specialized care that can prevent the development of serious health issues. Keeping feet clean and moisturized helps maintain good health. It’s also important to trim nails so that the people in your care can engage in exercise without any pain or discomfort. The feet are often overlooked in-home care, and they can often show the first signs of other developing health concerns. Circulation issues can also be addressed with the feet, and the importance of comfortable footwear should never be disregarded.

Meal Preparation

One of the most important aspects of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the adoption of a highly nutritious diet. Dietary concerns are a strong consideration for the elderly, and allergies, taste preferences, and other considerations need to be taken into account when you’re preparing a weekly menu. Many senior citizens have trouble with tough food or nuts because of dental issues, and it’s important to offer a varied menu.

A nutritious diet helps stave off illness and can assist in the overall health of your clients. There also needs to be a lot of coordination with families to ensure you have all the information you need to provide the best service possible. A regular selection of healthy snacks is also strongly advised as it allows everyone, including the staff, to keep their energy levels up as well as their positive energy.

Health Monitoring

As part of a basic service, all adult day care centers need to engage in regular health monitoring. Basic data collection such as weight and blood pressure can help you stay alert for warning signs that illnesses or other problems might be in their early stages. The more attentive you are to health developments, and the earlier you can diagnose the problem and start a treatment plan, the better positioned you are to ensure the continued health of your clients.

Counseling

Many senior citizens are at a stage in their life where they regularly experience great loss. Some are processing the passing of friends, family, or loved ones, and counseling services are a great resource to help them deal with these transitions. There is a strong relationship between mental and physical health, and untreated depression, even when there aren’t outward signs, can lead to a rapid physical decline. Counseling services should be available that allow your clients to identify and address a variety of concerns.

Exercise

Exercise is one of the best ways to promote health and happiness, and exercise also offers an opportunity to build a community within your adult day care center. Many senior citizens are unaware of what they are capable of, and everything from light activity, to moderate team sports should be available. Exercise encourages blood flow and helps stimulate an overall positive sense of well-being. Friendly tournaments give your clients something to look forward to.

Always design your exercise programs with safety as the highest priority, but give your clients enough leeway to lose themselves in the activity. Even something as simple as a group walk can imbue a sense of satisfaction that will leave your client glowing with contentment even as he or she is picked up and taken home in the evening.

Therapy

The recovery and maintenance of meaningful activities are vital to the quality of life of senior citizens. Physical, occupation, and speech therapy help to provide the most practical benefit during the time the elderly spend in your care. These sessions can be offered individually, or with the option of group sessions that can further build and strengthen the community within your center.

Social Activities

Activities that help encourage socialization are always extremely popular within senior centers. Socially focused activities like gameplay, educational classes, or improvisational theater, can bring out aspects of the personalities of your clients and allow them to view your facility as a second home. The social element of every activity, from lunch to exercise, should always be emphasized.

Caregiving always extends beyond meeting the physical needs of your clients. Helping to attend and manage the emotional component of all the people within your care is the best way to ensure health, happiness, and satisfaction.

Transportation Services

Providing transportation is a tremendous service that greatly assists the lives of your care families. Remember that the families of your clients always feel the common stresses of both professional and personal obligations. The more you can show that you understand their needs, the more confidence they will have that you can also attend to the needs of seniors. This will provide them with tremendous peace of mind. Safe transportation to and from the family household is a great way to make your client’s lives easier and more convenient.

Always Incorporate New Services

It has been said that variety is the spice of life, and that is why it’s important to always be on the lookout for new and innovative ways to attend to your clients. While it is also important to maintain a regular routine, you should have a focus on regularly adding new activities and services within the framework of that routine to maintain interest and enthusiasm.

Always listen to the needs of your customers and let them guide you in the application of new care ideas. If you’d like more ideas for activities to offer in an adult day care center, call Innovation Senior management at 1-800-425-9914 to explore how we can work together. 

With an ever-changing economic landscape, it’s important to attempt to predict where you might experience rising costs. Accurate projections for future expenses help you create a functional budget and keep your business from getting overextended to the point where cash flow can become a concern. Increases in expenses also result in a net rise in fees, which can deter potential clients from opting for your service. In this article, we’ll discuss how senior living communities can remain affordable in upcoming years.

How to Keep Senior Living Communities Affordable

The social and political landscape can change quickly as every election has the potential to create widespread repercussions. Health care costs are increasingly part of the political discussion with pundits arguing the merits both of expanding and cutting programs like Medicare. Health care is just one area where political changes could have an impact on the cost of senior living communities. All business owners understand that the only constant is change, and it is important to maintain a flexible perspective, which allows you to adopt advantageous developments as they hit the marketplace.

Businesses that adopt a long-term plan to secure their financial footing and ensure healthy, sustainable growth are always in a better position when unexpected events influence the marketplace. It’s important for senior living communities to have their fingers on the pulse of their geographic locations with a set of pre-conceived strategies to ensure they can offer an appropriate service at a competitive price. Here are some suggestions for keeping expenses low.

Transition to Digital Marketing

Marketing makes up a significant expense for any business. Brand recognition is critical to success, and if potential customers don’t know you exist, they aren’t likely to contact you about contracting your services. In the past, businesses had to rely on traditional marketing platforms such as newspapers, television, and radio. The old model of traditional marketing sought the widest exposure possible. However, for this model to be effective requires a very large reach, which can be both costly and inefficient.

Today, the advent of social media has brought about the creation of digital marketing professionals. Digital marketing has a significant advantage over traditional marketing in that it is now possible to target your advertising only to the groups that are most likely to be interested in your product or service. All social media platforms harvest data, and they have the capacity to limit who sees your advertisements. The result is that a business pays for a much smaller advertising reach, but they do so with the assurance that a greater percentage of the people who see the advertisement will be interested in the product.

Take Advantage of Financial Consulting

Expenses are not a problem; the problem comes with surprise expenses that hit you at a moment when cash flow is already strained. With the rigorous demands of offering top quality service at one or several senior living communities, management often has limited time left over for projections. It is a very smart choice to delegate financial projections to an outside agency that can anticipate and help you prevent catastrophic, unexpected costs.

Specialization is becoming the hallmark of the modern business landscape. There is a tremendous value in consulting with a service that handles the finances of hundreds of businesses just like yours. These kind of financial services have seen everything and are able to give you a statistically accurate projection of where and how to reduce future costs. When you know what’s coming, you’re able to provide a more efficient and more affordable service.

Superior Human Resources

One of the best ways to ensure future sustainability and profitability is to hire the best people. Great employees are the backbone of your business, and retaining quality employees bolsters your reputation and saves you the expense of training new hires. There is tremendous value in implementing a hiring process that eliminates bias and provides the greatest statistical probability of selecting the best candidate.

Consulting with a human resources management team requires a minimal investment of time and pays off in significant long-term dividends. Creating a bedrock foundation provides stability to your business, which keeps costs low and ensures you’ll be able to handle every unforeseen eventuality.

Leverage Property Management

Property is another large and unavoidable expense of all senior living communities. If you are creating a new development, you have a lot of flexibility in where and how you build to maximize your potential for low future costs. With established communities, staying up to date on proper maintenance can result in considerable savings, which you will be able to pass on to customers later. Refinancing loans to take advantage of lower rates, or paying off loans altogether, can also create a lot of future pricing flexibility.

New developments in areas that are outside of busy city centers can also be a very attractive option. Many senior living communities are largely self-contained, and luxurious centers located in areas with lower property values have a number of advantages. The development of a senior living community can be the first step in revitalizing an area resulting in a rise in demand and property value. Often, highly attractive development zones are located only a short bus ride from populated city centers.

Smaller Rooms and Shared Rooms

One innovative way to offer a more affordable service is to provide a greater focus on community areas along with smaller personal rooms. Personal space is important for all people, but many facilities are finding they offer so many social activities that most of their residents prefer to spend the majority of their time in areas where socializing and personal engagement are more readily available. Shared rooms are also becoming more popular and can be much more affordable.

It’s possible for existing communities to retrofit their layout and create a more modern setting that takes better economic advantage of their existing floor space. Small rooms and shared rooms allow communities superior options for deploying their personnel and create a cozier atmosphere more conducive to developing fundamental and healthy relationships.

Superior Resident Risk Management

A fundamental commitment to safety and adherence to rigorous insurance standards can result in massive long-term savings. The earlier your community commits to adopting an aggressive, forward-thinking strategy, the sooner you will be able to reap the benefits. There is always room for superior safety features and employee safety training. Proper risk management prevents tragedy, saves expenses, and keeps your business affordable.

Prepare Now to Eliminate Future Costs

The key to assuring you can offer an affordable service tomorrow is to set the groundwork today. Every senior living community is different, and it often takes a thorough evaluation of the facility, staff, and other resources to create a plan that will place them in a strong economic position. Changes in the political spectrum, insurance, and health care costs are inevitable. The good thing about those changes is that they will affect all of your competitors the same way that they affect you. By maintaining a smart focus on the things you can control, you can ensure your costs remain competitive.

Congratulations for thinking about the future, that is the first step to getting on the path to a sustainable financial position. Please call Innovation Senior Management at 1-800-425-9914 for more advice on what you can do today to keep senior living communities affordable in the future.

Support for seniors is crucial to the health and wellbeing of our country, but while you’re doing your best to serve the seniors of today, are you anticipating and preparing for the seniors of tomorrow?

Let’s take a brief look at the NIC’s “Forgotten Middle” Study and what it means for the caregiving industry as a whole.

Why is There a Care Gap?

Assisted living communities are a popular destination for seniors who desire healthcare, physical, and emotional support, but these communities can be so expensive that only medium/high-income seniors can afford them. On the other hand, state and federal programs that are designed to support seniors with their medication and housing, such as Medicaid and Medicare, are only applicable to seniors with a limited income and assets.

This creates a significant care gap where seniors have few available options if they cannot afford an assisted living community but are too wealthy to qualify for government programs. This gap encompasses almost 8 million seniors and is only expected to grow in the next decade.

Demographic Makeups

While the number of “care gap” seniors is expected to double over the next decade from 7.9 million to 14.4 million, the demographic makeup of this group is expected to change as well.

Future groups of seniors are expected to be more educated, due to a lower high school dropout rate and a larger number of college and university graduates. This will create positive effects, causing fewer seniors to live in poverty, but will also increase this care gap and cause a greater need for ancillary services.

Another part of the care gap demographic that will change is the number of family caregivers available. Currently, 1 in 4 seniors who stay at home require the aid of a loved one for medical or financial reasons, but these family members will be growing older as well and, with America’s declining birth rate, these caregivers will be in need of support themselves soon enough.

Health Status and Needs

Health conditions like obesity, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes are expected to increase in frequency with the rising elderly population, potentially growing the number of middle-income seniors with high-need conditions to all-time highs.

These conditions, among others, can have an impact on a senior’s mobility and independence, meaning proper care communities and supports will become necessary for a significant portion of the middle-income population.

What We Can Do to Help

Although this study might make readers uncomfortable and inform us of troubling situations that we may face later in life, it also provides possible solutions and methods to support our aging population.

Providing services and suites at a lower price can make assisted living communities more affordable to middle-income seniors. Similarly, including family members and caregivers in the community’s operations can improve resident morale and increase services available to members of the community.

Thinking about what the future holds for our communities can be daunting, but it can also present a distinct opportunity for senior living developers, investors, operators and brokers. Give our team a call at 800-425-9914 today or visit us online to see how you can invest in this natural progression early and improve the lives of seniors in your area.