What is Assisted Living? with Kelley Smith

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The following podcast is provided by care partners living and answers for elders radio. And welcome everyone back to answers for elders radio and I am back again with Kelly Smith from care partners living. Kelly, I am so glad you’re here to explain the process. Well, you better. Now we get into assisted living. Yeah, what does it mean? Yeah, and and you know, here’s the thing. The world is probably heard that phrase five hundred times in their lives, right, but they don’t necessarily know what is it mean. So explain to us right now. Yeah, what is this? Stood living? I’m this on putting you on the spot. It’s okay, assisted living. All that basically means is that you have a care plan, you have physicians orders, Hmm, and the care team is set up to specifically help you with activities of daily living throughout your stay in a community. So what that means is is maybe, maybe all you need is your little stiff in the morning. You need somebody to come and help you put on your titoes, maybe help you with your shoes, all the way up to to person transfers and I and helping people toilet, you know, be able to take care of their continents issues. It can be little, it can be all the way to full care, depending on what your needs are. But there’s an actual care plan that the nurse reviews with the CARE staff. MMM, and that makes you assisted living. It’s helping you enjoy life to the best of your ability with somebody around to help you when you need it. Well, and what I love about assisted living is you know, you can start out maybe needing just a little bit of help with medications exactly. It does not have to be huge and and you could start out and maybe it’s only, you know, an hour’s worth of time a day. But you know, as your needs increase, obviously you paid for what you need exactically. Isn’t that correct? It is. Why why would you pay for a big chunk of care that you’re only using this little small portion of? There’s some communities that do that. There are now with so much I don’t you know which is. I know it’s a whole other you pay a flat rate and this is just what it is. Well, that’s that’s the long term. That doesn’t always help you. Now, if you’re a full care it’s very different. But with assisted living, to again with a cost like you said you can just have somebody make sure you take your medication every day and make sure it’s been ordered properly and you don’t run out and that they’re watching your dose and you don’t have pharmacy and you don’t have to deal with that. So maybe the clist have that and that’s good peace of mind, because I know with seniors oftentimes they’ll did I did I take my pill and either they’ll forget that they took it or they don’t take it at all or they’ll double up because they think I think that they didn’t, and so those things can be you know, when you get a little bit forgetful, you might be just that might be one little thing that you need help with exactly. And what people don’t realize is the number one reason people wind up back in a hospital situation is usually med errors. It’s totally you know, why did MOM keep falling down? Well, she’s dizzy because she’s taken too much of her blood pressure medication. So let’s get her on that. and the cost can be fairly, fairly inexpensive as well. You can be looking at two thousand and twenty five dollars a day or med management ten dollars a day versus having a career come in for, you know, thirty five, forty dollars an hour right. So you know, you have to look at, you know, costwise, what makes the most sense as well? Absolutely, and and then, furthermore, you know with assisted living is there might be situations like I know when I have some wonderful senior friends and I go to their home, but I watch they furniture walk, you know, they have mobility issues. They have situations where they, you know, have a hard time getting up and down off the toilet, so we, you know, have to raise the toilet see, or they have issues with you know, maybe it’s hard to shower, so they go a few days without showering because they’re afraid they’re going to fall fit. You know, fall issues are huge. Well, they are because at our age and as you get older, and I say that because there’s consequences. Now, when I was twenty and I fell off my bike, it was like, okay, I bounced, I’m good, right, I’m in my s now and now it’s a concern and I think what’s going to happen in twenty or thirty years? And you have to take a look at what are some of the things people are concerned about? So if it’s fall issue, maybe maybe they have somebody committed do just to stand by assist in the shower. HMM. That way, if you’re feeling a little wabbly, somebody’s right there to grab hold of right they can do the care you need without invading your privacy. Absolutely, which is a big deal. I think a lot of people are hesitant to move to assisted living because they’re afraid that all they’re there, everything’s going to go away. Dignity, my dignity, my autonomy, I’m gonna go somewhere else, somebody tell me what to do. No, no, you still have resonant rights and you still have the ability to do things that make you happy. You just have somebody around to keep you safe, absolutely, and I think that’s important. And remember that if you fall, there’s somebody there to help you. I know my mom used to wear a little thing around her wrist that she wore that two seven even word into the shower, which is amazing. I think those pendants are great and and all you do is if she could push a button. Yeah, whatever she needed and boy oh boy, they were there on the spot. So those are the nice things about having assist a living is that, you know, to emphasize really, you have your own apartment, Yep, your own furniture, Yep, your own things that you like. You’ll have a refrigerator. Most cases you’ll have a little stone. You may not have a stunts on the community microwave or something like that. You’ll have your ability to do you know, if you want your own breakfast cereal in the morning, that’s totally fine. There isn’t anything. You can have your TV set. It’s usually got cable service. You but it. And like in our communities, we also have any time dining. So what that means is, I mean, come on, you retired. You’ve got your whole life by a clock. I love that. Right. How many people do you know that when you say, okay, now you’re seventy years old, and what time you want to get up in the morning when I feel like you right. So why do you have to get up at seven? Are you going to Miss Breakfast? Why? I why can you come down at ten and have a hot breakfast? And in Care Partners Properties you can. So it’s it’s anytime dining, which fits the resident schedule well. When I’m at home. Let me ask you. Do you eat lunch every day at noon? No, no, no, so it depending on our circumstances or what’s going on. It might be later earlier in the day. Well, why can’t we treat our they’re human beings that have a right to have a life. I love that. So why don’t we give them that life, and all we’d dare’s to buoy them up and support them. I love the goal is you never see US underneath. Yeah, right, yeah, you just see the end result in that is happy residence, and that’s the thing I love about you know your your communities, because it’s truly is supporting that well being to bring to us what we want. So we are talking again to Kelly Smith, and Kelly is the vice president of marketing of care partners living. Kelly, you’ve been an inspiration summits to us and certainly you guys are such champions forces to living for seniors and and certainly with Medicaid and assisted living can be so expensive. I know my mom ran out of money. She was in a community and she ran out of money before she went on Medicaid because her sister living fees and her community. You know, and her rent. She we were writing a check every month for ninety five hundred more. How do you sustain that? Well, you can, you don’t. You can’t do it forever. The majority, the majority of what we see out here are middle class folks, you know, that put their kids through school, did a lot of different things and they don’t have the twenty percent of the population that can live anywhere, live anywhere right ahead, do you think? You would think? She had about three Hundredzero left out of the sale of her house because she’d had a reverse mortgage on the terms of but that was good. That’s good, and it sustained her for another couple of years before she was ready to move. But the thing was is, you think three Hundredzero, that’s plenty of money, sure the rest of your life. Right? When? So you’re writing a jade tenzero and thous you know, and and it’s like in in her you know, health insurance and of course you know my mom. She buy stuff on catalogs and all that stuff. You know I mean. But the money is gone. Yeah, and then what? And then what? Yeah, right. So the idea is to understand that as care increases, there’s a chance that your loved one may run outlive their money, and that’s some things. It’s that’s to consider exactly. Let me share something with you very briefly. We’ve run our own reports, we do our own stuff to kind of see where we’re out with the industry. Standard Life expectancy and memory cares about two and a half, three years. Care Partners Properties, it’s seven. Wow, assisted living, assisted living, they will tell you five to seven years, because most people move in with Comorbidities, which means mom just doesn’t just have our right as she also has Heo PDR. Right, okay, I’m just saying there’s other things going on. Our life expectanty expectancy, excuse me. And Care Partner senior livings is fifteen years. So what I’m saying is they spend down three or four years, they spend that money that they sold that house for and we know there’s a good chance we’re going to have them a long time and that’s still okay with us. Well, and you know what that is? Comfort? It’s continuity and it’s important, especially to seniors that they can count on the same people being there, that they can count on that community that they live and they don’t have to feel like, oh well, you know, they’re not going to be here very long, I better not get to you know. Yeah, no, it’s not like that. And we just had a situation this week where we took a lady from our bothul community that does not have memory care and she’s now happily living in Marysville because our teams all know each other and so that that slide was simple, easy, no transition fee, nothing, nice and easy for the family, nice and easy for her and we all know her. We all have and you know that’s so important too. Again, it’s that continuity, has hair exact, and it’s having that ability to just stay focused on you know what the most important thing is, for sure. Well, and again, why don’t? We should be honoring our owners, right, I mean, is that what you do with this radio radio show, is it’s all about honoring our loved ones, they and their family and their families, and I think that’s what we try to do as well, is make sure that we understand what the families going through as well and trying to support them to because it’s tough watching mom and dad get older. Well, and Kelly, you see, you make such an important point, because to honor your family member and to make sure that you have that kind of standard is so critical. Yeah, you know, I guess that’s why I’m so picky about the people that we have on the show, because to me it’s not about money. Not I thought it was because my mom called you and told you I needed a friend, but you know, I don’t. I don’t. I’ve often said that I don’t care. I care more about the quality of this show than anything else and I would rather have, you know, three of the best cream of the crop people in the world on this program forever then have twenty five people that you know are just there because they’re in the industry can and so that passion to me, is so important and you guys embody that and and I am, you know, so thrilled to finally be able to say that you’re part of our family, because you guys bring such an amazing service to our seniors and we look what you did and I send you people, I know you do. You’re like my best buddy. So, anyway, I am looking forward to our next segment. Is Kelly’s going to be back? Thank you. The preceding podcast was provided by care partners. Living and answers for elders. Radio to contact care partners living co to care partners livingcom