Assisted Living Directory Blog

I don’t think it would come as a surprise to most people who are familiar with the “Valley of the Sun” that Scottsdale, Arizona has a high percentage of seniors.  In fact, Scottsdale has 38,274 residents over the age of 65.  I am sure this number swells in the winter time, as the ’sunbirds’ flock to warmer climes..

That is a very impressive number - one of the highest I have seen for any city.   I have spent a lot of time in the Scottsdale area, and it is most certainly senior friendly, and a nice place to live.   There is a lot of great shopping in the area, and many services geared towards seniors.   The weather is the biggest draw I think.  Never (well, almost never) will you need to get a shovel out for the snow.   Scottsdale is almost always sunny, and in the wintertime, temperatures are usually in the 70’s and 80’s.   Not bad!   So, we have finally created a page for Scottsdale assisted living.    Scottsdale has many assisted living facilities, and a number that cater to people with Alzheimer’s or memory/dementia issues.

Here is a great question submitted to a facility on our site.  I am posting it because it really represents the complex questions facilities may be asked from potential residents or families.

The question:

Do you accept patients that have a mental disability, receive Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare for payment?  I am the legal guardian of my mother and conservator as well.  She is 55 years in age and she just can not be left alone in her house for any length of time without having to go back into the hospital.  She is non-violent, but can be uncooperative in following her treatment plan.  She is currently receiving services from Comprehensive Mental Health Services.  I will not be able to pay any out of pocket expenses for an assisted living facility.  We need to place her immediately.

I am always thinking of ways to make this site more useful.   Of course, by having a free listing service for facilities has been the biggest draw for the site, and the source for most of our good feedback.

What I am learning is that there is a large caregiving community that love to communicate with each other.  After all, caregiving is an activity that demands support from other people going through the same thing.  Caregiving is something that can’t be gone at alone.

So, what I have been pondering lately is possibly putting a forum on the site.   This would be an area that people could go to to post questions or concerns about caregiving issues, or feedback about particular assisted living facilities, and have others reply with comments and feedback.

I would like to get some feedback first from people who think this might be worthwhile or not.  I don’t want to waste time on features for the site that won’t be helpful.

So, any feedback on putting a forum on the site would be most appreciated!

David

I get a lot of e-mails from various people regarding just about anything and everything having to do with assisted living.  Sometimes, these e-mails are complaints about a particular facility or company - alledging abuse, or neglect, or unsatisfactory conditions.

I usually don’t do anything with these e-mails, because I have no way to verify or dismiss any claims made against a facility, and I try to keep the “tone” and “energy” of this site and blog positive.  I do not (thankfully) have any relatives in assisted living right now either, so I don’t have any solid first-hand expeirence to offer my 2 cents worth with.

However, I have noticed a trend lately that isn’t favorable to Sunrise Assisted Living.   It seems that, lately, every e-mail I get complaining about a facility or company, is directed at Sunrise.

Here is the one I received today:

“I had my mom at a Sunrise Senior Living, or Sunrise Assisted Living, whatever they call themselves, and she got robbed, abused and under fed.

Be careful and research the facility before you take your loved ones there. I wish I would have googled Sunrise Assited Living first.  There’s a lot of terrible complaints about all their facilities.

Be careful”
- James

I have received other e-mails beating up Sunrise for various reasons.  Another one begins:

“As of this email, there are now three separate harassment charges against Mrs. “Smith” (the name was changed by the editor)  from different employees, and Sunrise Corporate has ignored each. They are choosing to smooth it over and forget about it instead of addressing the growing concerns and number of claims against Debbie “Smith”. Two more housekeepers have been added to the list, each with different stories on how Sunrise, specifically Mrs. “Smith” has chosen to ignore any rules.

A disturbing trend is happening at Sunrise Senior Living, which is allegations of abuse, and other claims of harassment by Corporate Employees….”

It goes on for another several paragraphs.

Again, these are in no way the opinions of Assisted Living Directory.  I invite any person with Sunrise to comment.

It looks like Frasier Meadows retirement community in Boulder, Colorado is doing some pretty substantial construction! A friend of mine was in Boulder yesterday and took this photo from his I-Phone, and sent it to me (Technology never ceases to amaze me, even with something as simple as taking a photo from a phone and then e-mailing it). My friend Dave also asked me if I thought the assisted living market was seeing any effect from this bad economy. I told him that to some degree, probably yes - however, every day I see a new news article about how such-and-such assisted living company is pumping x-number of millions of dollars into a new facility….or how such-and-such company is showing profits, etc. I think it is an industry that is somewhat insulated from the current economic crisis - after all, you can’t stop aging, and Alzheimer’s, and especially now, it may be very difficult for family members to act as caregivers, as the responsibilities for work, or for finding a job are increased. Also, many families may be looking at having their homes foreclosed on, making them, and perhaps an aging parent, find housing elsewhere - which might mean assisted living. Anyways, that’s my 2 cents worth. Here’s the photo my friend took of Frasier Meadows:

Frasier Meadows, Boulder CO

I came across one of the most unique videos I have seen in a long time…and it is, for lack of a better word..creepy.   This excellent film called “I forgot my name” by a fellow named Matthew Cox uses animation to depict what is might be like for someone with Alzheimer’s to get lost in their own home…and the loss of self that encapsulates this horrible disease.  Matthew’s video is both hard to watch, and hard to not watch, if you know what I mean.  

I have been going through the site recently, looking for cities and areas that could use more representation for assisted living facilities.   As I was going through Florida, I noticed that I didn’t have much going on for the Jacksonville area.   I knew that Jacksonville area was pretty big, but I had underestimated it a bit.

I was surprised to learn that Jacksonville has over 800,000 residents, and over 10% of these residents are over 65 - or over 80,000 people.   Although this is slightly lower (percentage-wise) than the national average, that’s a big senior population!

I was equally surprised to see that it wasn’t as easy as it was for other cities to find a solid and diverse mix of assisted living facilities and services in Jacksonville, relative to it’s size.   There are a few companies that have a pretty good showing in Jacksonville - emeritus.com and brookdaleliving.com - but beyond that, there were relatively few privately owned facilities that were easily found in a simple search.   We even looked around on Youtube - often times facilities post video clips of their facilities - but no luck.

I know there are more - and maybe that’s where our site can come in - to help those assisted living facilities in the Jacksonville and Orange Park area to get the word out on what they offer.   We will list your service/facility for free, and you can include photos, video, and your services and amenities.   We also include google mapping on our facility listings.   So, we are “Calling all facilities in Jacksonville” to send us your information so we can post it on our Florida/Jacksonville page!

I have been going through the site trying to add cities that are under-represented in terms of facilities.  I don’t have an exact science on picking cities, but sometimes I just scroll through the site and see where there might be a defecit.    I was a little bit surprised that Los Angeles was not represented very well.  I think I only had one facility listed as of a few days ago.

Los Angeles has a lower than average percentage of seniors - only 10% as compared to the 12.5% national average.  Still, this is a huge number of seniors.   In addition, due to the great weather in California, the number of seniors in this area, including Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Hollywood will surely grow considerably over the coming years.   Currently, there are approximately 376,815 seniors in the Los Angeles area (according to the 2007 census for Los Angeles).

Our Los Angeles Assisted Living page includes many of the areas within the greater Los Angeles metro area, including Beverly Hills.   We will continue adding more assisted living and Alzheimer’s care facilities to this page over the coming weeks.   We encourage any facility administrator to send us your facility information, as well as any photos, or even video clips!  We’ll be happy to post them on our Los Angeles page!

Every day I seem to learn something new about the Assisted Living industry - which is great, since, at times, I do wonder if I have seen or heard it all.

This week, I learned that there is such a thing as “Eco-friendly” assisted living.   I learned this through a listing that was submitted to the site.

At first I thought that it might be a gimmick - I mean, really, how “green” or “eco-friendly” can an assisted living facility be?  Of course, you can recycle your cans, office paper, and plastic bottles, but is that enough to allow yourself to be called eco-friendly, or ‘green?’  Maybe 20 years ago, but probably not today.

The facility in question - Crismon Peaks Eco-Friendly Assisted Living in Mesa, Arizona really seems to capture what being ‘eco-friendly’ is really about.   Not only is their facility Eco-Certified and constructed with many green materials, they also feature Air, Water, and Laundry purification systems [to remove the toxicity from their residents' daily lives] as well as an Organic Beauty Salon/Barber Shop on location.

We applaud Crismon Peaks for being a leader in providing Eco-friendly assisted living services.   We hope that more facilities will follow suit.   Any green or eco-friendly effort not only helps our planet, but also helps to create a healthy living environment within our own walls - even if it is an assisted living facility.

Message that came into our website yesterday - please contact Mick at the number below if you are interested:

We are selling a 250 acre parcel of land outside of Marietta Ohio, Washington county… if you or someone you know is looking to expand an assisted living, retirement community or nursing home type of facility… our property would be a great location and wonderfully developed parcel… for more information feel free to respond or contact Mick at 330-283-2834.