Baby Boomers Will Change Nursing Home Care…For Better or Worse

By Karen Kallen-Zury, CEO Hollywood Hills Rehabilitation Center
HealthNewsDigest.com) - The Baby Boomer generation has had a profound effect on every aspect of our culture, and that trend will continue as the Boomers age – including significant changes in nursing home care.


If you have had any exposure to nursing homes, you know they have already changed dramatically. People used to enter nursing homes to stay for the remainder of their lives. Now these facilities are more commonly used for subacute care – someone enters the hospital to have a surgical procedure, enters a nursing home to recover and rehabilitate, and then leaves. Long-term residents are usually those who are disabled or suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Most Boomers are at the age now where the primary concern is their parents, so they are learning about the options available. This is a generation that likes to do research, but when choosing a facility there is no substitute for spending time on site. The best research is to walk around, see how residents are taken care of. Note the attitudes, the smiles, the smells. You want to find a place that makes you feel comfortable. All the statistics in the world won’t matter if you don’t feel good when you walk in.

As it becomes time for Boomers themselves to make use of these facilities, they will be much more demanding than previous generations, which will drive further changes. It also will very likely set up a clash between what they want and what Medicaid.....read the whole story

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