“At Home” with Long-Term Care

As the “Baby Boomer” generation ages, more focus is being placed on the value and quality of care at Senior Living facilities. The Medicare website projects that by 2020, 12 million older Americans will need long-term care, representing 40% of 65-year-olds. With a longer life expectancy, this population’s size and high quality-of-life expectations will create a need for forward-thinking long-term care facilities. Those facilities will need support service providers who can make a difference by serving up “home” to residents.

Choosing the Best

Where do Seniors go for help making the decision of where to live out their golden years? Currently, the only official ranking system is located on the CMS Nursing Home Compare (NHC) website. It uses a 5-star ranking to sort out senior living facilities, weighing results from health inspections, analyzing staffing, and looking at specific quality measures. While many consider these measurements unreliable (2 of 3 categories are self-reported) and confuse the star ranking with the hotel industry’s, NHC is the only place to go.

Safety First

Senior Living Administrators know that state-reported deficiencies and investigated complaints are heavily weighted on NHC and will affect their ranking for some time. These two areas can be greatly protected by knowledgeable facilities management and environmental services teams that can guarantee a clean, safe, and comfortable environment. Crothall managers are specialists in regulatory compliance standards. Health safety and sanitation become important quality indicators to seniors when deciding where to entrust their delicate years.

Compassion Always

While no specific weight is given to resident satisfaction in the ranking, investigated complaints noted on NHC would certainly indicate a need for caution. Senior Living Administrators must work hard to establish and uphold an uncompromising reputation for compassion to forestall complaints. This is an area that Crothall managers, who are coached to understand the mindset and needs of Senior Living residents, can lead by coaching teams to offer great service and a “home away from home.”

To do this, Facilities Managers like Villa St. Benedict’s Russ Britton also wear the hats of Safety, Security, Construction, Grounds, Housekeeping, and, on occasion, Bus Driver, and Cook. “We respect the needs of our residents as if they were members of our own families,” Britton explains. Client Glenn Trembley sees this as essential to their mission: “Villa St. Benedict is built on a set of core values that help enrich the everyday lives of our guests. Everyone who serves at this facility is devoted to these principles.”

At Isabella Geriatric Center in Manhattan, EVS Director John Cuva and his team have become “Home Again Ambassadors,” a group of employees committed to creating a home-like environment for Isabella residents. As Ambassadors, they run a Men’s Group, which Ambassador Michael Robinson says is: “like a family.”

While performing the services to guarantee residents a home that is clean, safe, and comfortable, Crothall teams take that extra step so important to great resident satisfaction— one that says “this is your home.” As this market moves into a challenging time of growth and innovation, Senior Living Administrators will need the help of partners like Crothall to differentiate from the competition.