Written by:
6/15/2010 3:25 PM 

One of the oddities of long-term care journalism is that the public typically sees a lot of the dark side of the story—nursing home horror stories are a staple of popular journalism—but owner/operators of these facilities often see the sunny side. If you want to be scared to death as you enter the world of assisted living and nursing homes, read the daily newspapers and online blogs. If you want something reassuring or enlightening—well, sorry, that reading isn’t for you.

For that you have to turn to the professional magazines and journals that serve owner/operators. I know, I edited one for some 18 years, and was often amazed and heartened by the stories I uncovered. Numerous long-term care facilities, companies and organizations go the extra mile every day in resident care, staff support and community outreach. Our own take on it, when I edited Long-Term Living, was the annual OPTIMA Awards competition we began in the mid-1990s, now entering its 15th year. We received detailed write-ups every year from facility staffs, ranging from a dozen to three-dozen entries from proud staffers describing a new program they had initiated and documenting in detail how it had worked out. When I considered every year the financial and regulatory pressures these staffs were under, with minimal downtime, I was gratified to see how facilities responded and the substantial effort most of them put into it.

The most recent variation on the OPTIMA approach I’ve seen is the “ALFA Best of the Best Awards,” published in the May/June issue of Assisted Living Executive. ALFA, or the Assisted Living Federation of America, is one of the two national organizations (the National Council on Assisted Living being the other) representing assisted living owner/operators. This year the ALFA magazine published brief reports on 33 new programs from 23 organizational members. You can find the electronic version of Assisted Living Executive and the article at www.ALFA.org. While admittedly it’s not all for direct public consumption, focusing as it does on the nuts-and-bolts of facility administration, a scan of the 33 items will suffice to give you a much more reassuring feel for the people and environment of assisted living than you are likely to get from the public media.

You will see programs aimed at helping seniors cope with public agencies and programs; efforts to enliven the dining experience; initiatives in the burgeoning field of senior wellness; and, most of all, creative programs for supporting facility staff in performing and understanding their daily responsibilities. You may rest assured, there are facilities out there that take very seriously their staffing responsibilities in providing in-depth support for frail elderly and others.

In fact, I would say that there is enough going on out there that, when you visit SNAPforSeniors.com and undertake to compare facilities in your area for placement of a loved one, you should ask whomever conducts the facility tour—hopefully someone from administration or nursing—about specific programs they have underway to support staff. While you may hear quite a bit, even without asking, about resident care initiatives they have undertaken, it is less likely you will hear about staff support unless you ask—that’s administration’s bailiwick, after all. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: an informed, compassionate and reliable staff is the key to long-term care quality. You may be surprised, and like me gratified, to learn how many facilities know that and are doing something about it.

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Location: Blogs Caregiving by Richard Peck

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