What to Look for When You’re Looking for an Assisted Living Community
Whether you’re researching for yourself, a friend or a family member, navigating the world of assisted living can be challenging. Knowing this, over the course of this blog, our goal is to make it easy to understand what assisted living is and explain the multitude of benefits living in a great assisted living community can provide.
Along the way, we’ll discuss who needs assisted living, explore how assisted living offerings have changed in recent years, and explain exactly how Senior Living Options of Colorado can help you find the assisted living community that best suits your needs.
What is assisted living?
Simply put, assisted living is a type of care that provides daily assistance but allows residents to remain independent. Unlike a nursing home, which focuses mostly on medical care, assisted living facilities typically focus on alleviating the stress of life’s more complicated tasks.
Residents who live in an assisted living community typically live in their own apartments or rooms and share common areas. In this aspect, assisted living is very similar to dorm living or the structure of a regular apartment complex.
The exact care provided at an assisted living community will vary from one to the other. However, general services offered at an assisted living community include assistance with personal care, medications, housekeeping and cooking. Assisted living facilities also provide security and social activities.
Most assisted living facilities also offer different levels of care depending upon a resident’s individual preferences and needs. Assisted living can include various levels of medical care. Assisted living facilities in Colorado are licensed through the State of Colorado government.
How have local senior-living offerings changed recently?
While most senior-living facilities used to focus primarily on medical care, it’s becoming increasingly common for senior-living facilities to also offer a wider array of amenities and features. Nowadays residents are not simply seeking a facility that will take care of their medical needs but a community where they can attend social events and maintain their lifestyle.
To keep up with the growing demands of residents, senior-living facilities are being constructed differently than they have ever been in the past. Today, a great amount of care is being taken to design facilities that productively promotes the needs, wants and desires of its residents. While in the past most senior-living facilities would resemble a standard nursing home, today assisted-living facilities may include anything from recreational centers, swimming pools and movie theaters to restaurants, golf courses and group dining rooms.
The level of care placed in designing a curriculum of recreational events and activities is also higher than it has ever been. Most assisted-living facilities frequently host game nights, movie viewings and other events aimed at connecting residents and creating a community.
Who needs assisted living?
Whether you’re assessing your own needs or the needs of a family member, it can be difficult to decide if assisted living is the right choice. A great way to decide if assisted living is right for you or your family member is to assess what tasks you or they need help with.
The following list of ADLs (activities of daily living) are ones you should consider before looking into assisted living. If you find yourself or your family member needing or wanting help with a multitude of activities or tasks included on this list, then assisted living might be the right choice.
- Bathing
- Dressing
- Toileting (going to the bathroom)
- Transferring (getting in and out of bed)
- Continence (controlling your bowels)
- Dining
In addition to considering the ADLs listed above it’s also important to consider IADLs (instrumental activities of daily living):
- Managing money (i.e., writing checks, handling cash, keeping a budget)
- Managing medications (i.e., taking the appropriate dose of medication at the right time)
- Cooking (i.e., preparing meals or snacks, microwave/stove usage)
- Housekeeping (i.e., performing light and heavy chores, such as dusting or mowing the lawn)
- Using appliances (i.e., using the telephone, television, or vacuum appropriately)
- Shopping (i.e., purchasing, discerning between items)
- Extracurriculars (i.e., maintaining a hobby or some sort of leisure activities)
How much can people expect to pay for a decent assisted living community?
While the level of care and exact price of care will vary from one assisted living community, it’s important to estimate how much you can expect to pay per month before deciding on assisted living. According to AssistedLiving.org, the average resident of an assisted living community in Colorado will pay $4,000 per month.
Taking this average into account, assisted living in Colorado is less expensive than the average price of assisted living in the United States. According to one blog, the average cost of assisted living care in the United States is $4,500 per month. This breaks down to $150 per day and adds up to $54,000 per year, compared to $133 and $48,000 per year in Colorado.
What does Senior Living Options of Colorado do?
Senior Living Options of Colorado is a placement agency that helps assess the needs of a potential resident and formulate a community selection that will address current needs and anticipate future needs. All potential residents receive a free professional assessment from a registered nurse.
In addition to assessing a resident’s needs and placing them in a suitable and exciting assisted living community, we also continue to provide ongoing care management. Even after placement, we continue to advocate for the resident by completing reassessments after every 3, 6 and 12 months during the first two years of care. This helps us ensure residents are getting the best level of care and their care, health and lifestyle needs are all being met.
Far too many seniors are placed in a care facility that doesn’t meet their needs. Senior Living Options of Colorado aims to make sure every resident gets the care they need and is placed in a community that allows them to continue to thrive.
How should people approach their search for an assisted living community?
When searching for an assisted living community, it’s important to consider a wide range of factors. The most important factors to consider are an individual’s current needs, an individual’s future needs, and an individual’s financial stability. After you consider these factors, it’s also important to inspect each facility you tour or research.
When researching a particular assisted living community, you should first make sure the facility is licensed and ensure the facility meets your state’s regulations. Next, you should try to ask other residents of the facility or their family members if the facility meets their needs. Senior Living Options of Colorado can also provide a complete overview of the level of care provided at each facility we have placed residents in.
Next, you should ask about the financial cost of each facility and ask if the facility has a waiting list. If the financial demands of the facility align with your means, you should make sure to visit the facility a few times before agreeing to a contract.
Just before you are ready to sign an assisted living contract, you should show the contract to a lawyer to ensure everything is standard.
When you deal with Senior Living Options of Colorado, we make it very easy to get honest and effective assisted living care. We vet all of the facilities we place residents in and our continued reassessments make sure all residents are getting the level of care they need now and in the future.
What are the warning signs of bad care?
It’s frightening to imagine that the care provided to your loved one is bad. To avoid dangerous or negligent care, it’s important to always scrutinize the level of care being provided. While visiting your loved one or talking with them over the phone, it’s also important to watch out for several warning signs of bad care.
The most obvious warning signs of bad care are:
- Sudden emotional or physical changes
- Evasive staff or failure to answer common questions
- Unorganized or frantic staff
- High staff turnover
- Direct refusal of care from a particular staff member
- Bad personal hygiene
What are the warning signs of a bad assisted living place?
Just as frightening as bad care, the thought of moving a family member into a bad facility can be equally tormenting. Luckily, Senior Living Options of Colorado can take the stress out of choosing an assisted living place. In addition to ensuring the level of care meets our standards, we also inspect every assisted living place we recommend.
These are the warning signs we look for when inspecting a facility:
- Poor reviews
- Uncleanliness
- Unsafe location or conditions
- Overly loud environment
- Low-quality meals
- Inflexible visitation hours
- Lack of individual privacy
- Lack of outdoor and indoor activities
The Senior Living Options of Colorado Promise
We always go above and beyond to ensure we properly address the current and future needs of our clients. Our high-caliber care starts with our commitment to having a registered nurse assess the health and needs of each resident.
Senior Living Options of Colorado also places great emphasis on selecting an assisted living community that will suit the current and future needs of a resident. We’re here to help you make an informed decision!
Why Senior Living Options?
FREE RN assessment of needs for the perfect living environment.
Far too often seniors are “placed” in a living environment that is not adequate to support their needs! The need for assistance in personal-care, socialization, memory-care, medication compliance/administration change as your loved one ages within the initial living environment!
For this reason, the initial assessment and evaluation of your loved one’s need for assistance is completed by a licensed registered nurse and a licensed physical therapist FREE of Charge!
In addition, we realize that diagnoses of dementia, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis and other cognitive impairments require additional special care. In these cases, Senior Living Options of Colorado will arrange for an evaluation to assess cognition, memory, and other behaviors in order to develop a qualified opinion on the placement of your loved one.
Senior Living Options of Colorado is the only senior placement service to offer these evaluations and assessments FREE of charge.
Generally, 99% of placement agencies will develop needs assessments from their staff of non-clinicians.
Memory Care? What’s provided?
For individuals with dementia or some other form of cognative impairment who may require a higher level of skilled care or supervision, memory care could be an alternative. Certain communities offer private and shared living arrangements. They may either be adjacent or attached to an assisted living or nursing home, or a stand-alone facility.
In these cases, care and supervision is provided 24 hours a day. Memory care offers the exact same services as assisted living but with increased supervision and also activities intended to stimulate memory and cognition.
Alzheimer’s and dementia progression many times leads to unsafe conditions for people to live independently outside a controlled environment. Such cognitive impairment leads to difficulty with actvities of daily living –toileting or personal hygiene and meal prep.
Even with help from community-based services and respite services providing care at home for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, becomes increasingly difficult. In advanced stages of the disease, more care and assistance is necessary and more than family members can provide. These are considerations that caregivers and their families find difficult to plan for or to even discuss. That is why we are here.
Paying for assisted living and memory care is always a concern. A crucial new update in 2019 and 2020 Medicare laws involves Medicare Advantage, a Medicare option that partners with private insurers to provide customized care. the definition of “supplemental benefits” is expanding, and will allow assisted living and memory care communities to be officially designated as a beneficiary’s “home.” While the program won’t cover the entire cost of living in these residences, it can potentially make various aspects of assisted living or memory care more affordable.
Memory care units are architecturally designed for the specific needs of Alzheimer’s patients: often with a circular layout because those with moderate dementia often feel increased stress when approaching a defined barrier. This also allows residents to more safely move about the building. And, unlike some assisted living facilities, memory care units do not have individual kitchens. This helps keep the stress of those with dementia and their loved ones at a minimum.
While some assisted living facilities do have secure areas to accommodate those with mild dementia, memory care units place extra emphasis on security to prevent patients from wandering, a common habit for those with more advanced dementia. Many locations offer a secure outside area where patients can enjoy the outdoors but ar unable to leave the facility grounds.
The following are some questions that you may want to ask the memory-care communities you’re considering:
- What level of care does the community provide?
- What type of training has the staff received?
- What is the monthly rate for housing and care? What services does that rate include?
- Are rooms private or semi-private? How do prices vary for each?
- What level of personal assistance can residents expect?
- What is the policy for handling medical emergencies?
- How is the community secured?
- What meals are provided? Are special dietary requests accommodated? (such as kosher meals)
- How often are housekeeping and laundry services provided?
- What programs (exercise, physical therapy, social and other activities) does the facility offer?
- Does the facility accommodate special care needs, such as diabetic care, mobility issues, physical aggressiveness or wandering?
- Are residents grouped by cognitive level?
- What is the ratio of staff to residents during both the day and the night?
- How does the facility communicate with families about a resident’s well-being? And how often?
- What is the discharge policy?
Frequently Asked Questions
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