10 Things your Assisted-Living Facility Won't Tell You

Most days I start out by grabbing a cup of coffee and reading articles posted on the internet about senior housing, and of course, real estate. I found an article by Smart Money entitled "10 things your assisted-living facility won't tell you." (I'm not linking to it here out of principle).  Smart Money often has some good articles I enjoy reading.  However, this slanted bit of reporting was not one of their best pieces of work. After reading it I was so damn mad it took me a couple of hours before I could post this.

The article tells horror stories about assisted living communities: changing fees, unskilled workers, no nurse on duty, no security call systems, and failure of the communities to meet up to promises made by the marketing person. Any consumer would be nuts to even consider an assisted living community after reading that article! In fact, it made me wonder why assisted living communities are allowed to exist at all! These communities are painted as being staffed by uncaring, inept workers, who are only out to make a buck. 

No industry is perfect. If it were I wouldn't need to spend my morning writing an industry consumer awareness blog, but would be writing poetry instead! However, these kinds of scare tactics do nothing more than feed the fire of consumer fear, add one more reason to procrastinate planning senior services, and fail to educate consumers on the smart way to choose an assisted living community. 

I'm a huge advocate of industry transparency, and believe consumers are smart enough to see through sugar-coated polly-anna type reporting. On the flip side-consumers, in general, don't seek out information about senior services until they need to.  The information needs to be simple, direct, and organized. This overly dramatic scare tactic is not helpful at a time when our elderly and their families need more information, not more fear.