At the beginning of 2012, Senior Housing News, a leading industry news source, detailed its top 10 trends for the coming year. Now, with 2013 underway, many of the trends anticipated by the organization have already begun to take shape in the industry.
For example, two of Senior Housing News' first three predictions centered around changes to the assisted living sector. In the article, the experts at this publication indicated that they expected migratory trends and economic factors would lead more seniors to age in place, rather than in traditional assisted living facilities.
Subsequent research has only bolstered this claim, as more recent studies from 2012 show that as many as 90 percent of all seniors now say they want to live in their primary residence as long as possible, and that many of them are willing to explore alternative care options as solutions to this concern.
The organization also laid out a bleak view of the then-upcoming election, in which it suggested that while entitlement programs would be a focus of the major campaigns, "partisan politics and the election year will do little to advance senior housing policy within the next 12 months."
Another conjecture that has certainly come to pass was the organization's view that Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS) and other remote monitoring devices would become more mainstream.
"More applications [or 'apps'] will be developed for a range of devices including laptops, PCs, tablets and smartphones. Cross-platform applications will be critical as caregivers [both professional and familial] will want to carry their own devices and won't want to carry multiple devices," Senior Housing News wrote.
At Independa, we're leading the way in helping care facilities embrace these changes. We know that facilities need to offer even more services to their care recipients and be more ahead of the curve with their offerings. We can help with these goals, as our tools can ensure facilities secure a higher profit margin using existing staff and that customer satisfaction remains high.
