COVID-19 has returned with a vengeance, and our nation is still struggling with some of the very issues that surfaced in the beginning, including shortages of personal protective equipment, controversy about social distancing and business closures.
But despite more than 100,000 deaths attributed to the coronavirus among residents and staff in U.S. nursing homes and other long term care facilities, I fear we keep postponing the important changes we must make to stop the spread of infection in long-term care facilities, now and for years to come.
Simply put, we need to do so much more to ensure better housing options for seniors, whether they live at home or with others. The issue is particularly important to us, our mothers and female family and friends because women outlive men. The average woman lives to 81, compared to 76 for men and often women’s longevity comes with good health overall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The issue isn’t going away. By 2010, 88.5 million Americans will be 65 or older, up from 40.2 million in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of people 85 and older is expected to triple by 2050, from 6.3 million to 17.9 million. This well-established graying of America, comes with other new realities. Families are smaller than they were several generations ago. More families are dual-working couples, who may live miles away from their families and aren’t available for caregiving.
We’ve started to address this issue, but nowhere to the extent needed.
Many communities and non-profits offer programs to keep seniors in their homes. But too often, these programs are limited to van pickups to ferry seniors to appointments and meals-on-wheels. The programs also may have waiting lists or are restricted to low-income seniors.
There’s a big need for other services, such as respite programs so caregivers can get a break; advocates who can accompany seniors to appointments; and telephone support for lonely seniors. Yes, there are programs like those, just far too few. The solutions aren’t always costly. One New York friend used voter registration rolls to find seniors in his remote area and lined up volunteers willing to call seniors to see how they are doing and talk about whatever is on their minds.
Dozens of Michigan counties have passed millages for some of these services, but there hasn’t been enough support to do that in the metro Detroit region. Instead, counties typically give grants to non-profits that serve seniors who are able to drive or get to their facilities. These programs, while vital, just aren’t reaching enough people, particularly the frail elderly.
Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities also need to change. I recently listened to an online discussion with four architects who have spent their careers designing smaller, livable facilities for seniors.
We still don’t know, they said, whether older facilities without more efficient ventilation systems or any other factors explain why some facilities had no cases of COVID-19 among residents while others had hundreds. But homes can down-size or can better control infection spread by creating vestibule space or outdoor gardens so visitors and delivery people don’t have to come into buildings, the architects said. Others are creating space for mini or mobile clinics, so that some health emergencies might be addressed on the site, not in hospitals. Others are exploring ways to down-size, convert double-occupancy rooms to singles, and taking down walls to create more open environments with outdoor views.
Indeed, the nation has a model, the architects said. It’s called the Green House Project, a 17-year-old non-profit organization with 300 homes in 23 states, including Michigan. It hopes to open another 30-40 homes nation-wide next year.
Each Green House typically has 10-12 residents, who have their own apartment and bathroom, a shared dining area, and gardens or porches. There are usually two nursing assistants and a nurse for every 10 residents, which allows staff to actually get to know their residents. Many Green House programs, including Resthaven in Allegan County, accept Medicaid patients.
The Green House Project is hosting a series of online forums to discuss some of these issues. For details, go to thegreenhouseproject.org. The non-profit hosted the recent architect’s forum on senior housing design to reduce COVID-19 transmission.
So how does change happen?
That’s where you come in. Become an advocate for improved options for senior housing. Write your county commissioners and your state and federal elected officials and tell them these are critical issues that must be addressed. If there’s any silver lining to COVID-19, said architect Scott Pfeifer, it’s making people aware of what’s needed in senior services.
I hope those options will be there for me as I age.
And I am certain you will want them there for you too.
About the Author
Patricia Anstett is an experienced medical writer who worked 40 years in newspaper journalism in Chicago, Washington D.C. and Detroit, her hometown. For the last 22 years of her professional newspaper career she was a medical writer for the Detroit Free Press, retiring in September, 2011. In 2017, she was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, and she was named Headliner of the Year by the Association for Women in Communications. She is a member of the Detroit AWC chapter, and has been its president, Headliner and Diamond award winner, along with earning a national AWC Clarion award for her women’s health reporting.
