Now that we have lived through COVID-19 and seen just how vulnerable individuals that reside in nursing homes and assisted living facilities are in a time like this, will people stop using these facilities?
This is the question that many senior care experts are starting to ask. Tragedies linked to COVID and senior care facilities have spurred a lot of resentment toward these institutions. Many people have publicly stated that they would never consider placing a loved one in one of these homes in the future as a result of this. Simply put, a lot of people have lost their trust in the senior care facilities that they thought were supposed to keep loved ones safe.
A loss of trust has definitely occurred. In some cases, this is well deserved. Some care facilities have long been negligent at doing everything that they could to protect residents. In other cases, the negligence falls on behalf of the local governments and authorities. There have been many rules and regulations that either were ineffective or just not enforced that led to a lot of the issues with nursing homes that we are now seeing.
But in many other cases, issues were completely unavoidable. If you asked around a year ago how long quarantine was going to last, no one would have guessed that we would still see restrictions a year later. No one would have guessed that so many people would have died because of the pandemic. No one expected it to be this long lasting and severe. Although the issues are certainly serious, they were not completely avoidable.
There have been issues exposed, but care will continue. We’re likely to see more senior care services arising in the next several years. The fact that the senior population is growing is more than enough to spur this forward.
Although COVID-19 has changed how we as a country think about senior care, the short answer to the question posed at the beginning of this blog post is no. Senior care facilities will still exist. They play far too important of a role to just disappear.
But at the same time, changes do need to occur. Senior care has had issues for years; the pandemic has helped the public to become more aware of them. One of the best things that the pandemic has done is to make people more reluctant to use nursing homes. This is something that we have been recommending to people for years. Nursing homes do great things, but they are overused. Not everyone that is placed in a nursing home should really be there.
Alternative types of care are often better at helping seniors meet their needs. It’s not surprising that more people are leaning toward in-home care than ever before. People want their loved ones to get the help they need, but they also want comfort and happiness. In-home care helps to make that happen.
Do you have questions about care? Give us a call. We’d love to help.
https://www.iadvanceseniorcare.com/perspectives-will-people-return-to-senior-care-facilities-after-the-pandemic-part-ii/a
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