Multigenerational Housing: Would You Live with Seniors and Would Seniors Live With You?
A couple of years ago I was with some Ecumen colleagues on a trip to another part of the country for some market research. We were visiting a really nice CCRC (continuing care retirement community). It had really nice townhomes and assisted living and memory care, even a children's day care center. It was a cool neighborhood. I asked one of our hosts if they ever thought about creating housing where anyone could live regardless of age? She looked at me like I had three heads and said: "No way. It would never work."
Maybe that's true for some people. But it's not true for all people. And that's going to create new "senior housing opportunities" that are simply "housing opportunities" in communities that are truly for a lifetime.
More on this topic at our senior housing development blog . . .
Ecumen Work to Reduce Antipsychotic Medications in Nursing Homes Covered in New York Times
The New York Times today has a great story on Ecumen's Awakenings initiative to reduce the use of antipsychotic medications among Alzheimer's and dementia patients in nursing homes.
- According to one report, Medicaid - which pays for most nursing home stays in America and kicks in after a person has spent into poverty - spends more than $5 billion on antipsychotic medicines, which is more than it spends on any other class of drugs, including antibiotics, AIDS drugs, or medicines to treat high blood pressure.
- Statistics vary from state to state, but anywhere from 17%-45% of nursing home residents across the U.S. are prescribed antipsychotics.
- Moreover, according to a study published in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society, more than half are prescribed inappropriately to control dementia-related behaviors even though there is no mental illness diagnosis.
- The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reports that about 30% of nursing home residents receive antipsychotic drugs, and approximately 20% do not have a psychosis diagnosis.
There is a better way. And through Awakenings, which is supported by a $3.8 million grant from the State of Minnesota, we are working to achieve it and empower the people we serve in our nursing homes. It's not easy work, but it has to happen. For additional information on Awakenings, please go here.
Love Story in the New Old Age from Ecumen Lakeview Commons
L to R: Jim McShannoch, Irene Filkins, and Ecumen colleague Cathy Collins
Every love story is unique. Jon Tevlin of the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently sat down with Ecumen customer Jim McShannoch, who shared his journey of love at Ecumen Lakeview Commons and the relationship he shares with his wife, who has Alzheimer's, and his neighbor Irene Filkins, to whom he is engaged. Here is Jon's column in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Ecumen Lakeview Commons and VisitingOurs Skype to Bring World Closer Together
Ecumen Lakeview Commons in Maplewood is partnering with community volunteer Tom Sweeney on a pilot. Sweeney heads a volunteer organization called VisitingOurs, which is matching volunteers with seniors to use laptop computers to conduct video chats between family members who live far away. Our customers dig it, and it shows how technology makes the world much smaller, but also how the human touch makes use of the technology possible. It also gives us insight on how we can integrate the video chat function on the social networking tool Ecumen Connects. More information is provided here at Ecumen Lakeview Commons site.
Hip Mill City Commons Hosts Hip Discussion on Changing Aging
Last night a very energizing, provocative discussion on the future of aging was held with about 50 members of Mill City Commons in Minneapolis, a cool neighborhood for a lifetime.
Moderated by Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts, panelists included: Marcia Townley, chair of the Mill City Commons Board of Directors; Peter Hutchinson, president of the Bush Foundation; Rep. Paul Thissen, minority leader in the Minnesota House of Representatives; and Stacy Becker, who oversees aging financing work for the Citizens League.
A few of the many golden nuggets heard last night:
We have to tackle chronic care and stop putting acute care and sub-acute care in separate buckets. . . if we don't, there will be no money for anything.
I know an orthopedic doctor who treats an obese 40-year-old. But his practice doesn't want him to talk to that patient about "prevention" and weight loss . . . it's only about the joint replacement. . . . the procedure . . . not prevention.
What legacy do boomers want? How will they become part of the solution in an aging world?
Everyone talks about the boomers. But the generation before the boomers - those who did a lot of major lifting on major issues such as civil rights - are changing aging. They're the ones who have innovated, creating communities such as Mill City Commons.
A panelist's brother died at a a leading hospital in Minnesota, and it cost $51,000 because they didn't know he had an advanced directive.
We have to think about dying now. It should be a patriotic duty to have a living will
Cities need to be part of changing aging with updated zoning laws. In many cities you can't have 4 people living together under one roof who aren't related. But that's exactly what four people might want to do to age in place and stay out of a nursing home.
We have to change public policy for long-term care financing. We have to change the incentives. It would have very positive long-term impacts on the state budget and on people's lives.
Think about this: Right now in Minnesota a spouse can be working making $250,000 per year, her spouse can go into a nursing home and qualify for Medicaid. The nursing home cost is totally covered by the state, with no contribution from the spouse making $250,000 per year.
Ecumen Named Best Place to Work By Minnesota Monthly
Absolutely essential to high-quality senior services is a high-quality, engaged workforce. We're honored to be named by Minnesota Monthly as one of Minnesota's Best Places to Work. The issue is on newstands now in Minnesota. Congratulations to our nearly 4,000 team members who bring our mission "to create home for older adults wherever they choose to live" to life daily. To learn more about Ecumen jobs and The Ecumen Way, visit our employment area.
Will America See a New Green Senior Housing Category?
One of the country's fastest changing professions is senior housing and services. As I was reading the news about the new LEED-certified green senior housing that Ecumen recently developed for North Country Health Services in Bemidji, Minn., I'm wondering if we're going to see a new housing category in America - green senior housing?
Think about land use. My colleagues who develop senior housing often talk about the need to build not just one-off housing, but to develop "villages" that contain nearby shopping, multi-generational housing and other amenities that provide easy access for people and use land in a more effective way. Do you think America will see more green senior housing?
Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age
Has anyone read yet Susan Jacoby's new book Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age?
Based on her essay in this week's Newsweek (see below), it looks thought provoking, especially as you think about your own aging journey. There was also a big review of it in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (dig the Journals references to Cicero and aging). That she's getting this much space/attention is another sign of Changing Aging in America . . .and it also illustrates how critically important an innovative senior housing and services profession is to the future of our country.
The Myth of Aging Gracefully
Who wants to live to 100? Just about everyone, if old age fulfills the fantasy that we can sail through our 90s with vigorous bodies and minds and die instantly of a heart attack, preferably while making love or running the last of many marathons. As the oldest baby boomers turn 65, it is past time to take a realistic look at old age as it is--not as a minor inconvenience to be remedied by longevity-worshiping hucksters of "anti-aging" supplements or brain-teasing computer games, not as a "disease" that will soon by "cured" by a medical miracle, and not as an experience to be defied and denied, in the spirit of a 2008 World Science Festival panel on aging titled "90 Is the New 50." No, it's not. It's not even the new 70.
The truth is that we are all capable of aging successfully--until we aren't. The media love to uphold examples of "ageless" aging like Betty White, a scintillating comedian at 89, or Warren Buffett, an investment sage at 80. These exceptions are easier to think about than the general rule that physical and financial hardships mount as people move beyond their relatively hardy 60s and 70s, classified by sociologists as the "young old," into the harsher territory of the "old old" in their 80s and 90s. There is a 50-50 chance that anyone who survives to blow out 85 candles will endure years of significant mental or physical disability. The risk of Alzheimer's disease doubles in every five-year period over 65. Furthermore, two thirds of Americans older than 85 are women, who usually become poorer as they age. Many won't die at home, with the best care money can buy, as Sargent Shriver did in January, but in a Medicaid-funded nursing facility after their life savings have been exhausted. There is nothing wrong with hoping for a medical breakthrough to alleviate age-related diseases--especially Alzheimer's--but hope is not a plan of action. Age-defying hope and hype do nothing to address either the overwhelming political issue of how to pay for Medicare and Social Security as the population ages or the many personal decisions about retirement and end-of-life medical care that each of us must make.
This is not to say that anyone should give up on the rewards life can offer the very old, but that, as individuals and as a society, Americans must prepare for the possibility that not the best, but some of the worst years of our lives may lie ahead if we live into our ninth and 10th decades. Geriatrician Muriel R. Gillick, in her book The Denial of Aging, emphasizes the social consequences of faith in an ageless old age: "If we assume that Alzheimer's disease will be cured and disability abolished in the near term," she writes, "we will have no incentive to develop long-term-care facilities that focus on enabling residents to lead satisfying lives despite their disabilities." More important, blind faith in medical solutions prevents discussion about the urgent nonmedical needs of the old. Americans need not only better long-term-care facilities for the sickest old but community-based services to foster independence for the healthier old. When politicians advocate raising the retirement age to bolster Social Security, they also need to consider the dearth of jobs for old people already looking for work. Only when we abandon the fantasy that age can be defied will we be able to begin a conversation, based on reason rather than on yearning for a fountain of youth, about how to make 90 a better 90.
Can a Mall Become Senior Housing or a Regional Senior Service Center?
Architect Ward Issacson, AIA, a member of Ecumen's senior housing development team, writes about repurposing existing buildings into senior housing. Interestingly, Ecumen recently helped turn a school in Detroit Lakes, Minn., into senior housing that's a great asset to the community and helped preserve a treasured building with great community memories.
The Collegeville Cane Club
Last year students of Ecumen's employee leadership development program called Velocity spent time learning from people in other settings, including 3M, Mayo Clinic and St. John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minn. Curriculum during each of these visits centered around part of our brand promise: Innovate. Empower. Honor. An article in Saint John's Abbey's Banner Magazine recently caught my eye. It's a neat perspective on aging and a longtime global tool of empowerment called "the cane."
The Collegeville Cane Club
By Dan Durken, OSB, a member of the St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn.
Any photograph of the Collegeville Cane Club should include all the monks who have celebrated their 50th anniversary of monastic profession. On that occasion a cane is blessed and given to each jubilarian with this prayer: “Bless + them and bless the canes they carry. Sustain their hope in the saving love of your Son . . . and help us all to support one another as brothers of your Son, Jesus Christ.”
The monks you see here daily carry their canes to give them the support they need. The curly maple cane I received on July 11, 2000, was not put to use until Abbot John suggested several months ago that I use a cane after I had taken a few falls that gave me classic bruises. Since then my trusty cane has not been a stigma of frailty and old age but a sturdy friend whose support I appreciate.
The blessing of the cane calls upon all of us “to support one another.” No matter how young or how old we are, the support of others is absolutely essential. Only the hermit monk chooses to be “self-reliant, without the support of another” (Rule of Benedict, 1.5). I pity more than envy him.
As I prepare and present my last edited issue of Abbey Banner, I am filled with gratitude for all the people who have supported me page by page, picture by picture of these first thirty issues. Cane in hand, I now move on to whatever the future brings. If the past is preview to the future I am looking forward to more “good ol’ days.” Thank you and God bless you.