Senior Housing and Assisted Living

WindsorMeade of Williamsburg, an active, Continuing Care Retirement Community in Williamsburg, Virginia received licensure from the Virginia Department of Health to begin admitting residents to its nursing facility and has begun receiving admissions for both current residents and eligible individuals from outside the community.  The WindsorMeade of Williamsburg nursing facility encompasses 12 private residences with private bathrooms in beautifully appointed surroundings.

“We are so pleased and excited to offer our residents the full spectrum of health care a Continuing Care Retirement Community provides– from active, independent living, to assisted living and now nursing facility services”, announced Marilyn Gladding, Executive Director.  “Our residents can have complete peace of mind as they move through their retirement years, knowing all aspects of their health and well being are supported by highly trained professionals, in a dignified and caring setting.”

NIC Announces Premier Partners for 2010 at Regional Symposium

National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing & Care Industry (NIC) recently released data for fourth quarter 2009 that showed occupancy rates for senior housing declining while rents continue to see increases.  The data also showed that construction pipeline for new products is drying up as new product rolls into active inventory. Average occupancy during fourth quarter 2009 was 88.2% versus 89.8% during Q4 2008.

"At the same time, our fourth quarter 2009 data was the third straight quarter where seniors housing registered positive absorption, indicating positive demand growth," said Robert G. Kramer, president of NIC. "More people have been living in seniors housing in the past year, so the industry is growing in terms of consumer demand."

The average monthly rent (AMR) per unit for independent living was up slightly during the 4Q09 to $2,659, which compared to $2,618 year over year. For assisted living, the AMR was $3,536 in the 4Q09, up from $3,478 during the 4Q08.
For independent living, the trailing-twelve month (TTM) construction activity was just 0.5% of existing inventory in 4Q09.

"Supply grew faster than demand during the quarter, which led to an overall lower occupancy rate," explained Kramer. "But the construction pipeline is emptying out as more units come online. In addition, the rate of starts has slowed significantly. And with the very tight credit markets, that situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. This could be very positive news for occupancy growth in seniors housing in 2011 and 2012."

At its regional symposium in San Diego, California, NIC announced that Health Care REIT, Inc. (NYSE:HCN) and Surface Logic became official premier partners with the organization for 2010.  The partnership – created specifically for companies who support multiple NIC events and initiatives annually – offers a year-long association with the organization whose mission is to advance the quality of seniors housing and care in America by facilitating informed investment decisions.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the Quality of Life Technology Center (QoLTC) recently announced a study that will embed wireless sensors in the residences of about 50 older adults who live alone to see if they can detect subtle changes in everyday activities that indicate the onset of dementia or physical infirmities. The project hopes to demonstrate that simple, unobtrusive sensors in residences can alert medical professionals when a person begins to lose physical or mental abilities.

The research team is one of five nationwide selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to explore how observations of daily living (ODLs) — what people eat, how they sleep, their mood, how their medications makes them feel and other factors — can be captured, interpreted and integrated into clinical care. Each team is receiving a $480,000 grant for the two-year project. Project teams will then work with patients with complex chronic conditions to capture and interpret ODLs while establishing a relationship with a physician practice to share information. Over the 12 months, clinicians will care for 30-50 patients who are actively monitoring ODLs and assess the value of including the ODLs in their real-world care processes.

In addition, the program provides legal and regulatory compliance support to grantees and contributes to the public discourse on the legal and regulatory aspects of capturing ODLs and integrating them into care processes. The program will develop resources around the cross-cutting issues regarding use and safe integrations of ODLs as well as specifically advise grantee teams on applicable law and regulations that may alter the consequences of data-sharing between patients and clinicians.

"The loss of the ability to make a sandwich, dial a phone, or take medications correctly often occurs gradually and, particularly for people who live alone, insidiously," said Anind Dey, associate professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. "If we can identify this decline at an early stage, we have a chance to halt and even reverse deterioration that might otherwise result in an unsafe living situation and ultimately require the person to be institutionalized."

Are you a Kindle (Amazon E-book Reader) fan?   If you don’t have one and love to read books, we highly recommend purchasing one for yourself or adding it to your Christmas wish list.  Better yet, you can access Senior Housing News on your kindle for the whopping price of $1.99 per month.  Guess what?  We’re not going to retire from the subscriptions but we thought it worth while to provide our content there for those of our readers who are on the go.  The best news is that our content is still provided free on the web thanks to the support of our sponsors…Cambridge Realty Capital, Senior Living Investment Brokerage and the others that have supported us in the past and those we are currently working with in the future.

The concept of a paperless workplace truly seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, what if your public housing department can really make this a reality? Think about the time you’d save if you didn’t have to continuously hunt through filing cabinets for a particular application, a re-certification or the paperwork for a certain inspection.

In the past, housing groups have struggled to locate room to store the ever-increasing quantity of applications, funding contracts, loan and mortgage documents and more. Thanks to electronic document management software applications, they no longer have to be concerned about losing an important document or the problem that comes along with accidentally duplicating information and saving in it an assortment of places. An electronic document management system provides solutions to these organizational problems, as well as addresses other important issues of housing departments.

Besides paper and document processing, housing departments have 3 other major concerns: complying with record keeping and reporting laws, reducing administrative costs and distributing their grant money as effectively as possible. The best way for affordable housing agencies to handle paperwork influx, decrease costs, more easily comply and allocate resources is to implement an online document management and compliance system that includes workflow automation.

Such a system provides a faster and more organized means of secure document capture, routing, storing and maintaining audit-able records of applications, re-certifications, terminations, inspections along with financial documents. Document imaging and compliance software enables housing departments to monitor a document’s complete life cycle, from creation to disposition. The best kind of software program will automate approval processes in order to electronically move a document through its appropriate business process workflow instead of personnel moving a paper folder from person to person.

By means of an online document management application, your organization’s documents are now digital. So, what takes place if more than one user is accessing and altering the same document at the same time? Version control and revision tracking features take care of this issue. The application will track and make a record of who has accessed what files and what changes to the document(s) were made. The most up-to-date and current version is displayed as the current file.

Because the application is web-based, housing groups are able to eliminate the requirement for filing and storage space, resulting in reduced overhead expenses. The electronic system converts paper documents to digital documents, ending the struggle of manual paper processing. Not only are mind-numbing tasks gone, but paper processing, printing and photocopying expenses are eliminated.

Now, onto Records Management. With a system that includes a Records Management module for compliance, the solution tracks document retention periods and will alert you when its deadline has passed, and the document needs to be purged. This functionality is particularly helpful to avoid compliance difficulties that arise from surprise audits.

Document management software maximizes business effectiveness for housing departments as they allocate their grant money. With easy-to-use electronic access, the affordable housing unit can now drag and drop or import digital documents, or scan the paper documents into the system where all data is stored and routed through the appropriate workflow.

In addition to endless paperwork, housing agencies also daily receive a plethora of emails. A document management application categorizes and archives emails and faxes as they are continuously received. System users are able to then go back and effortlessly retrieve archived emails using a text search.

So, your next move is to get out there and do your research. Find an affordable, subscription based document management and compliance software that solves the requirements of your organization, and then benefit from ultimate business efficiency and compliance.

Want to find out more about how or why housing authorities use document management? Then visit DocuVantage on how to choose the best electronic document management software for your requirements.

categories: affordable housing agencies,affordable housing departments,affordable housing,housing authorities,local government,county government

The US population is getting older and living longer. The demographic ?blip? known as the baby boom is going to start having a major impact on our society as a whole with the large numbers of babies born in the years immediately following WW2 now starting to come to retirement age. The most recent Census information shows that by 2000, there were 34.1 million senior Americans (those aged 65 and older) making up 13% of the total population.

Furthermore, this age demographic is poised to double by the year 2030, meaning that upwards of 20% of the United States population will be classified as senior citizens. The fastest growing sector of that elderly population is the over 85 age group, set to grow from 3.8 million to over 7 million throughout the next two decades. On average, 25% of those over the age of 85 currently live in nursing homes and 50% require assistance with daily living activities.

The Assisted Living and Independent Living markets are ? at the same time ? being hit hard by the collapse of the financial markets. The high default rates on “subprime” and adjustable rate mortgages have led to the now very familiar ?credit crunch? phenomenon which has affected every major economy across the world. Bank collapses and property foreclosures are still regular occurrences and, although the US is now officially out of recession, the knock-on effects will be felt for years to come.

While the real estate market stagnates, an increasing number of elderly Americans find themselves in need of assisted living facilities. To fund such moves, they of course hope to sell their homes, which proves to be much more challenging given current market conditions. Difficulties are further increased by the United States’ shortage of quality assisted living facilities.

Not only does the slow market make seniors’ lives difficult, but these same conditions have resulted in fewer elder care providers funding new assisted living facilities, as take-up rates have fallen considerably. In contrast, Executive Care Group USA owns and operates the Balmoral Assisted Living, an Independent Living Facility at Lake Placid, to the south of Sebring in South / Central Florida.

Furthermore, this facility also includes dementia care suites, catering to the increasing population of seniors with early onset Alzheimer’s and other dementia issues. Recent stirrings on Capitol Hill regarding the health care bill suggest that elder care facilities will have to become more pro-active providers for such needs, and rather than simply ignoring the possibility, we at Executive Care Group USA have chosen to be forward thinking. As the U.S. Elderly population continues to increase, such planning efforts employed pro actively today will have great effects as needs and requirements change.

In response to current conditions throughout the economy and the health care system, we have instigated a bold plan to challenge this market trend. Not only do we continue investments in our current facilities, but we are also capitalizing on current real estate conditions to acquire new property. This newly-acquired land will feature state of the art, hotel-style assisted living resorts throughout Florida. Not only will these efforts benefit today’s elderly population, but we also anticipate reaping even more returns in the medium-term future.

We also feel that today’s funding difficulties faced by the elderly are only a short-term problem. As such, our compassionate care program recognizes that not everyone can afford to pay immediately. Instead, we evaluate each case on its own merits, recognize that not everyone can afford pre credit crunch rates, and offer creative solutions to help central Florida’s elderly population enjoy quality assisted living today, but at prices that reflect current market conditions.

About Danny Sharpe: Operates the Balmoral Assisted Living Facility in Lake Placid, the leader in family owned award winning Assisted Living Homes. His company provides senior assisted living facilities with nursing and dementia care: assisted living boca raton.

Since the early 1970s many scientific studies were published regarding the effectiveness of Therapeutic Touch, a form of Laying on of Hands developed in the early 1970s by Dolores Krieger, Ph.D., RN, a professor at New York University School of Nursing, and Dora Kunz, a well known healer.

At first Dr. Krieger and Ms. Kunz only taught the techniques to Krieger’s graduate school nursing students. But Dr. Krieger’s professional research and writing increased the popularity of the technique, particularly among nurses. The practice grew nationwide, through a grassroots effort of nurses throughout the United States. Currently, therapeutic touch is taught at hospitals and health centers worldwide and is most commonly practiced by nurses.

Therapeutic touch is a form of healing that uses a practice called “laying on of hands” to correct or balance energy fields. The word “touch” is misleading because physical touch is generally not involved. Instead, the hands hover over the body. Therapeutic touch is based on the theory that the body, mind, and emotions form a complex energy field. According to Dr. Krieger, health is an indication of a balanced energy field, and illness represents imbalance. Studies suggest that therapeutic touch can help to heal wounds, reduce pain, and promote relaxation.

Approximately 75-90% of nursing home residents experiencing dementia develop behaviors that are probably associated with a stress response. This practice is known to promote calmness, decrease restlessness and agitation.

UCLA researchers conducted a double blind study to determine therapeutic touch’s effect on cortisol levels and behavioral symptoms. Cortisol is a key hormone in the stress response. Its levels increase in response to perceived stress, as a way of preparing the body to run or fight.

Sixty-five participants, between 67 and 93 years (average age was 85.5 years) were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The experimental group received therapeutic touch twice daily, with contact on the shoulders and neck for three days.

The placebo group received a fake treatment that mimicked and was identical to the real technique, while the control group received routine care. The results suggest that therapeutic touch may be effective for management of symptoms like restlessness. This technique has the potential to provide, it may also help with reducing costs, because it is an intervention that is easy to learn use and can be an alternative to drug treatment for people with behavioral symptoms.

Want to find out more about how to get well, then visit Elaine R. Ferguson, MD’s site on how to choose the best mind body health techniques for your needs.