Assisted Living Facility Management

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Assisted Living Facility
Senior-Friendly Programs and Practices
Conclusions
References

Introduction

The human society is a quite complicated phenomenon where different people exist in different standards and conditions of living. This distinction is often observed according to race, sex, and rather often age. Elderly people become sometimes left alone by al their children and relatives, so they have no other alternative but continue their lives in special facilities for senior citizens.

The study of the very facilities and of the levels of living that they offer their elderly clients is a problematic point nowadays as far as very few research works have been dedicated to it: “Researchers know little about the physical performance ability of residential care/assisted living (RC/AL) residents and its relationship to adverse outcomes such as fracture, nursing home placement, functional decline, and death” (Baldini-Gruber et al., 195). Therefore, the current paper aims at filling the gap and at finding out the best four practices that I would implement if I were a manager of an assisted living facility to offer our clients so that to make their staying in the ALF as comfortable as possible.

Assisted Living Facility

Basic Notions

To start the consideration of the assistant living facility practices, it is first of all necessary to define the very term assistant living: “Assisted living (AL) is a term that has come to be applied to a wide array of residential settings for older adults. In the broadest sense, AL includes all group residential programs not licensed as nursing homes that provide personal care in activities of daily living and can respond to unscheduled needs for assistance” (Sloane and Zimmerman, 33).

Commenting this definition, scholars like Calkins (2007), Baldini-Gruber et al. (2005), etc. have expressed opposite opinions. While some scholars think that the range of services offered by a single organization can boost the competition in the area of senior people care, others stick to the point that such a generalization of services will damage the very idea about the high quality of servicing and regulation offered to the elderly people (Sloane and Zimmerman, 33). Anyway, assisted living facilities turn out to be better than their alternative – nursing homes.

Assisted Living Facility vs. Nursing Homes

On the whole, the so-called struggle between the two mostly widespread care facilities in the United States dates back to the 1970s, when assistant learning facilities first emerged: “Thirty years ago, assisted living began emerging as a response to what was seen as the dismal life nursing homes offered” (Calkins, 263). The point at the time was that nursing homes and services they offered raised a lot of controversy as health care and overall living conditions were far from those desired. The very clients reported numerous cases of careless attitudes of nursing home workers towards the residents and demanded some changes. The latter came in the form of assistant living facilities (ALFs).

Although with certain financial changes, i. e. demanded higher fees for residing in ALFs, the quality of care received there started satisfying numbers of people: “The assisted living movement has argued that care could be delivered in ways that respected the needs, desires, and preferences of the older individuals who lived there, and still be financially feasible for the provider” (Calkins, 263). Therefore, assistant living facilities currently provide high quality care to those in need, and this become possible due to certain policies implemented in ALFs.

Senior-Friendly Programs and Practices

Private Services

First of all, it is crucial that the work of assisted living facilities is based on three major principles that, according to Calkins (2007), include “privacy, autonomy, and dignity” (Calkins, 263). As far as privacy in listed at the initial position in this range, it is obvious that the personal life of every resident is treated as the greatest value in assisted living facilities. Therefore, the first of the senior-friendly programs to be established in my assisted living facility will be the respectful treatment of residents living them enough space and time to do whatever they could do living independently.

This practice has already proved to be effective as according to the research by Barker et al. (2006), the residents of assisted living facilities experienced neuropsychiatric symptoms or depressive symptoms less often that nursing home clients (there is a 37% difference in the occurrence rate) (Baker et al., 311). So, the program of personal services and personal freedom of the AFL residents will the first on the list of senior-friendly practices taken in my AFL.

Personal Accommodations

The second program to be implemented is the presenting of personal accommodations, i. e. at least private rooms to all the residents of the facility. It is a fact that one of the most frequent complaints of senior-care facilities’ residents is the lack of privacy and freedom in their lives. Therefore, it is necessary to consider these complaints and do our best to avoid them in our facility:

More than 900,000 Americans live in an estimated 36,000 residential care/assisted living (RC/AL) facilities in the United States…older adults do not want to go to nursing homes due to the high cost of care, loss of individual freedom, and the institutional/hospital-like setting. Assisted living may provide an attractive alternative, especially for older adults who need supervision or minimal assistance (Baldini-Gruber et al., 196).

Presenting residents of our facility with personal accommodations will add to both the comfort of their staying in our ALF and to the image of the latter in the sphere of senior-care services.

Regulations

Concerning the matter of privacy and proper services offered, the next step in the development of our assistant living facility will be the implementation of the regulations program, i. e. the system of oversight of the residents during their staying in the facility. One of the definitions of the ALF claims it to “provide or coordinate oversight and services to meet individualized scheduled needs, based on assessments and service plans, and unscheduled needs” (Sloane and Zimmerman, 34).

Therefore, our facility will try to conform to the highest standards accepted for the area of care about senior citizens. The very regulations program will involve the employment of staff to be on duty 24 hours a day and to be ready to present any necessary health assistance at any moment it becomes urgent (Sloane and Zimmerman, 34). This program combined with the two aforesaid ones allows us to take the comprehensive approach to the care for elderly people as they are simultaneously overseen and presented with as much personal freedom as they think to be necessary.

Health Related Services

Finally, the most critical area of assisted living facility development is the very area of health care. Senior citizens often experience serious health issues, and it is one of the major tasks of the ALF to help them when they are in difficult situations. One of the ways to provide the proper health care is to cooperate with certain medical programs that provide funding for the residents of the mostly privately funded assisted living facilities.

Medicaid is one of such programs: “Assisted living communities are, for the most part, still privately funded. Yet when their residents need assistance from Medicaid they are forced to relocate to a nursing home. But in states with Medicaid waiver programs that allow Medicaid to help fund assisted living, the differences are less apparent” (Calkins, 264). Therefore, health care will be an integral and one of the crucial parts of the system of four senior-friendly programs that I would implement being a manager of an assisted living facility.

Conclusions

Thus, concluding the paper, it is necessary to state that assisted living facility is one of the places where senior citizens of the United States can live in case they have no relatives or friends to take care of them. Since 1970s, assisted living facility has become the major alternative to nursing home, and soon won the support of the majority of elderly people as the place where better services are offered at lower costs.

Understanding the major focus of assisted living facility’s work, I would implement the programs of personal services, accommodation, regulations, and health related services if I were a manger of an assisted living facility as the four most important senior-friendly programs. These programs proved to be effective according to several research works and I am convinced that they will benefit my assisted living facility as well.

References

Calkins, M. (2007). Assisted Living, Nursing Homes, And Dementia Care Settings: Exploring distinctions and commonalities. The Gerontologist 47: 263-267. Web.

Baker, A., Brandt J., Harper M., Lyketsos, C.G., Mayer, L. Rabins, Rosenblatt, A., P. V., Samus, Q. M., Steele, C. (2006) Correlates of Caregiver-Rated Quality of Life in Assisted Living: The Maryland Assisted Living Study. 61: P311-P314. Web.

Baldini-Gruber, A.L., Chen, C.K., Eckert, K.J., Hebel, J.R., Magaziner J., Morgan, L. A., Sloane, P. D., Zimmerman, S. (2005) How Good Is Assisted Living? Findings and Implications from an Outcomes 60: S195-S204. Web.

Sloane, P. D., Zimmerman, S. (2007). Definition and Classification of Assisted Living. The Gerontologist 47:33-39. Web.

Click Here To Order Now!