Guest Post from our Friend, Author Dan Taylor

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
When a House is Not a Home (from ParentCareSolution)

I saw some statistics the other day that said that roughly 86% of Americans want to stay in their homes as long as they possibly can. Here’s the challenge with that desire: Nearly 99% of the homes are not designed to do that. The opportunity in all of this is to start thinking now about the adaptations that need to be made to allow you to age gracefully in front of the 60 inch liquid plasma TV with the Dolby sound system throbbing around you. The alternative to this planning is that if you want to stay in your home and decide not to plan, your dining room needs to be big enough to accommodate a hospital bed and the home theatre has to have a Porta-Potty in it. Here are some suggestions:

1. The hallways need to be wheelchair compatible and all the bathrooms need to be wheelchair accessible. That means that the big garden tub that you had installed to use when your children leave home is going to be the world’s largest indoor planter if you can’t access it. Showers have to be accessible via wheelchair. They also need to be big enough to accommodate sitting down if you have to.
2. If you have a two story house make sure you have some pictures of the second floor to remind you what it looks like. A stroke, Parkinson’s, arthritis, or any number of other debilitating illnesses can make the upstairs only a memory and completely inaccessible. Make sure that your downstairs can accommodate all the things you will want to do.
3. Consider dedicating a room for an at home caregiver. The mother in law suite of the 70’s and 80’s is going to give way to the Caregiver Suite for the 21^st Century. There is a real possibility that a caregiver will live longer in the house than your children and at the same time actually help you with things.
4. Get with Technology as quickly as you can. Allow a monitoring service to be installed so the people that care about you can tell when you don’t get out of bed for two weeks. Make sure something reminds you to take your medicines and gives you the right ones to take. Put a webcam on your computer so you can talk with your kids each morning. Put a microchip in your dog so when you let him out and forget to let him in someone can bring him back to you. Make sure there are sensors on your stove so that after you cook the green beans you make sure you don’t end up being cooked from a stove left on too long. Have automatic shutoffs on the water in the tub and washing machine so you don’t drown in your bathtub or need a kayak in your den. Use Technology to help people help you. View it as a pretty cheap caregiver and one that doesn’t show up late for work.
5. Hire a service to help you with your meals. Older folks forget to eat. A meal service can double as a health monitoring tool. If you aren’t eating you aren’t going to be doing much of anything else after a while. Besides, you deserve having Wolfgang Puck Oatmeal.
6. Talk to your family about what you would like. The reason people are left with no choices here is that they don’t tell anyone what choices they would like to have. To continue to operate autonomously and with great freedom you have to work in teamwork more with the people who care about you.

You can definitely age in place. The trick here is to have a place that's suitible for aging.

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

Smart Flat

Read here about a whole residence in the UK that is "smart"--

A "SMART" apartment that uses cutting-edge technology to assist vulnerable, elderly people opens its doors tomorrow.

The flat, at The Rowans sheltered scheme in Tyldesley, has built-in sensors that can detect and give an early warning of when tenants might be at risk. The sensors raise an alarm with a back-up team, allowing them to send help more quickly.

Conceptually, what's described in this article is what you get with our SimplyHome system. At a fraction of the price of this UK technology.

SimplyHome website

1,465,000 residents

According to the 1997 National Nursing Home Survey, there were 1,465,000 residents age 65 and older in nursing homes (about 4.3% of the US population age 65 and older in 1997). Nearly three-fourths of these residents were women, and about one-half were age 85 and older.

In 1997, about 75% of all nursing home residents 65 and older required assistance in three or more activities of daily living, including bathing, dressing, eating, transferring from bed to chair, and using the toilet. About 42% of nursing home residents were diagnosed with dementia, and 12% had other psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia and mood disorders.

Utilization

Lengths of stay in nursing homes vary widely and can be measured in different ways. Many people enter for brief stays; in 1997, 67% of people who left nursing homes had stayed for three months or fewer. However, the same data show that, of all those currently living in a nursing home in 1997, only 18% had been there fewer than three months (see Figure 1).

We believe that SimplyHome can help some people who may ultimately need to move to a nursing home, stay in their OWN homes longer. They may be living independently, or semi-independently (i.e., with visits from home health workers).

SimplyHome website

Saving $69,423.60

$194.00

That's the national average cost per day of private nursing home care in America, according to the AARP.

That's $70,810 per year.

Consider, then, how many cost-justify the SimplyHome system, which tethers caregivers electronically to a family member with "always on" data.

The system costs $799, and the monthly cost is $48.95. Implementation of the system means "aging in place," a fancy way of saying that the elderly or disabled person its helping does NOT need to move into an institution, but rather can stay at Home, Sweet Home.

Annual cost is thus $799 + (12 x $48.95) = $1,386.40, or 2% of the cost of a nursing home for a year.

In Year 2, of course, it is just 12 x $48.95 = $587.40, or <1% of the cost of a nursing home for a year.

SimplyHome uses its own two-way radio network, so all sensor data in the home is communicated all the time, in real-time. And one or more caregivers are alerted as needed, one or more ways (email, cell phone text messaging, automated voice).

As we like to say-- It Takes a Family.

SimplyHome website

Telemedicine Information Exchange

We found this information-rich site called Telemedicine Information Exchange.

Here's an excerpt from one of the typically trenchant article posted there:

Home healthcare is at a unique crossroad. Providers face a multitude of pressures from every direction - patients, personnel, and government. They must deal with a shrinking pool of clinicians, an aging, more chronically ill population, tighter regulations, and declining reimbursement. How providers choose to meet these challenges and continue to provide outstanding health care will be the deciding factor in many organizations' future success or failure. This is not a topic for idle speculation; it is essential to begin formulating a plan to handle these challenges now. Home healthcare providers must consider a paradigm shift away from reactive care to a proactive care model (Technology Administration, 2004). In a proactive system, patients take greater part in their own disease management and clinicians can monitor patients more closely, which enables them to provide preventative intervention before situations become acute. Home healthcare providers can achieve these goals for themselves and their patients by using technology - specifically, interactive telehealth technology.

We would argue that the "tele" in telehealth is NOT the phone, because it's not a good way to continually send data in real-time-- our system uses the GSM network-- but the spirit of telehealth (increasingly called "Digital Home Health"), we think, is spot-on.

SimplyHome website

United States Senate Special Committee on Aging

As a follow up to our post regarding our visit to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Aging, we want to highlight their website, and the fact that you can watch LIVE webcasts of their hearings.

The website is http://aging.senate.gov/, and check their website for hearings that you can watch as they happen. There was one last week, as an example:

May 16, 2007 -
Medicare Advantage Marketing & Sales: Who Has The Advantage?

Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) will chair a hearing titled "Medicare Advantage Marketing & Sales: Who Has The Advantage?" on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 10:30 a.m. in Dirksen 106.

SimplyHome website

We've Launched a Webinar Series

CMI LAUNCHES A WEEKLY WEBINAR SERIES AIMED AT CARE ORGANIZATIONS

Every Tuesday at 11:30 am EST, CMI Will Offer a Free Webinar on the SimplyHome Product Line, Breakthrough Assistive Technology for Public Caregivers

Community Management Initiative, Inc. (CMI), a company dedicated to helping caregivers support independent living for the elderly and disabled, now offers a free webinar every Tuesday at 11:30 am EST aimed at exposing the SimplyHome(TM) Assistive Technology system to managers at organizations that care for the disabled and elderly across the USA.

For more info click here.

SimplyHome website

Our visit to the U.S. Senate

See the photo above? That's where we were yesterday, the Dirksen Building which houses the nation's 100 senators in Washington, D.C. We talked to the folks at the United States Special Committee on Aging, and made three key points about Assistive Technology (AT) such as SimplyHome, which can help the elderly and disabled stay in their homes, supported by friends and family in a highly connected way:

1. While about 50% of Americans have broadband in their home...another 50% do not. Any solution that requires a broadband connection only serves half the nation. Systems like ours use a nationwide two-way radio network to send data-- we cover virtually everyone.
   
   
2. It's often the case that caregivers (friends, family) may not live right nearby the disabled or elderly person they seek to help. Even if they do, they may be working, traveling, etc. How to tether the resident needing help to caregivers? Email and cell phone text messaging, based on exception data. EXAMPLE: If Mom is not "Up and About" in the morning based on the motion detector seeing an absence of activity, her son and neighbor can get a message wherever they are, near or far.
   
   
3. Systems that make use of expensive or hard-to-install hardware also help only a few. Systems like ours leverage low-cost, wireless sensors, and the base unit is easy to set up and sits on a tabletop or can be wall-mounted, in 20 minutes. The sensors themselves have batteries that last five years, and when the batteries start to go low, the system alerts you via email/cell phone text messaging.
   

It's a rare bi-partisan issue-- using "AT" to save many millions of dollars that would otherwise be spent to pull folks out of their homes, and place them in institutions.

SimplyHome website

Web Yes, Paper & Fax No

This May 10, 2007 article indicates a potential tipping point in web-based health records:

Verizon Communications Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ivan Seidenberg said on Wednesday that the company has implemented an electronic personal health-record system for its more than 900,000 active employees, retirees and their families. Called Verizon HealthZone PHR, the system works in conjunction with WebMD to allow individuals to store personalized health information on a password-protected Web site, he said.

"We think this kind of a simple connection creates enormous consumer power to drive change across the system," Seidenberg said.

In Washington yesterday for a panel discussion that featured government and private-sector leaders, Seidenberg said Verizon's healthcare tab was about $3.5 billion last year, and, overall, about 90% of those transactions happen hand-to-hand via phone or by fax.

Similarly, the SimplyHome system from CMI is a web-dashboard into a residence where an elderly or disabled person is seeking to stay at home, whereby friends & family help ensure safety, security and well-being by connecting to the system via email and cell phone messaging.

It appears that the web-- that has knit into so many aspects of human life-- is making yet a bigger move into health care.

SimplyHome website

Telemonitoring Example: Blood Pressure

A 3/5/2007 article in FierceHealthIT News said this:

Boston healthcare giant Partners HealthCare has kicked off a new experiment under which it will monitor employee health by tracking high blood pressure online. Partners is rolling out the pilot with Boston-area IT management firm EMC, which has agreed to find 400 employees with high blood pressure to participate. The study will involve having half of these employees measure their blood pressure twice a week, using wired cuffs which transmit the readings wirelessly to researchers. (The other 200 employees will serve as a control group.) Researchers will call employees whose blood pressure is particularly high; otherwise, employees will be offered automated advice each week via a secure website. The effort comes as part of Partners' investment in telemedicine; the health system has budgeted $6 million over four years to establish telemedicine programs to manage diabetes, emphysema, depression and high blood pressure.

Telemedicine offers great promise regarding improving the quality and timeliness of care-- and at far lower costs than doctor or home visits require.

SimplyHome website

Telemonitoring Works

A 5/10/2007 article in HealthcareIT News said this:

Home-based telemonitoring of patients with chronic diseases has a great deal of potential, according to a new study published this month in a high-profile health IT journal. To conduct the research, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Canadian researchers reviewed more than 65 studies published in the U.S. and Europe. The studies looked at home-based management of chronic pulmonary conditions, cardiac diseases, diabetes and hypertension using remote monitoring technology. While it wasn't clear how large the effect was, home telemonitoring did seem to cut ED visits, hospital admissions and average length of hospital stays, authors said. Telemonitoring seemed to have more impact on pulmonary and cardiac cases than diabetes and hypertension.

The three key drivers of telemonitoring are in evidence in the SimplyHome system by CMI:

1. Highly connected caregivers-- they have email and cell phones-- sometimes together in the form of a PDA.
   
   
2. The ability of intelligent home-based systems to send real-time alerts and notifications when there's abnormal activity-- or the absence of activity.
   
   
3. No reliance on a phone line or broadband connector in the home-- as an example, the SimplyHome system sends all its data via a two-way nationwide data network.
   

SimplyHome website

So, what will we buy in the Mall?

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week and last week, author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Wednesday, May 09, 2007
So, what will we buy in the Mall?

I was walking through the mall the other day in Charlotte and it struck me for the first time how so many of the mall shops are devoted to merchandise for people 1/3 my age. It’s not that I would ever vary too much from the khaki’s and Polo I wear most every day anyway, but it would be interesting to have something interesting to consider that would give me the ability to not look like a Justin Timberlake groupie.

It struck me as odd that as a member of a consumer group that allegedly holds 70% of the liquid wealth in the country, purchases 40% of the second homes, makes up 60% of the tithing of most denominations and keeps 90% of the United Way and Red Cross organizations functioning that the only thing that really acknowledges that I’m valuable is that the Cheesecake Factory is really delighted when I come in. They are always happy in the Charlotte store because I think the Turtle Cheesecake qualifies at some level as nutrition (milk, eggs, nuts,). It follows the same logic that lets me believe ketchup is a vegetable.

Here’s what’s really going on: From the mall to housing to medicine to restaurants there is still not a commercial acknowledgement that we are changing as a society. It’s not that aging makes everything over, it just makes it different. My sense is that the great fortunes of the world are going to be made in the businesses that get this and capitalize on it. I don’t think we have to make age the focus…we just have to make it a consideration.

The first consideration as Boomers we can make is to consider how our Parents would like to be talked to and treated as a generation. Take a look at YouTube and its clip by The Zimmers “My Generation”. In addition to being entertaining it’s how your parents look now and how we’ll all look in about 20 or so years. National Parent Care Day (www.parentcaresolution.com) is another way to honor them. Just talking with them would be a start.

The real focus here is to not allow our parents or us as we age to be turned into some sort of objects in the room that are talked about in the third person even though we are there.. Part of the mall experience that I described above is a subtle step toward that type of marginalization. The message is that you become less and less significant as you age except for the money you can supply. In fact, it’s not even important that you spend it…just let your children be the agents for dispensation.

The mall would love it if you just sent the money. They wouldn’t have to have so many benches for people to rest on.

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

Words that don't work with Boomers

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week and last week, author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Words that don't work with Boomers

I love Dr. Frank Luntz new book, Words that Work (Hyperion Books 2007). In his book, Dr. Luntz talks about the way words are used to influence and motivate and the way they are used to connect thought and emotion. He talks about how to use the right words for the situation and how to choose the right words for the effect that one wants to create. If only Dr. Luntz had been in my grade school I think I could’ve skipped a lot of the “See Spot Run” stuff and gotten directly to telling Spot to stop creating spots on the floor for me to clean up.

As I read through the book I couldn’t help but think how the entire vocabulary of talking to people as they age has the collective aroma of formaldehyde and death. “Care Center, Assisted Living, Senior Care, Nursing Home, Special Care", are all terms that have negative connotations to them and even deeper negative connections. The language of Care is language about a useless past and a dismal future. It’s no wonder our parents don’t want to talk about aging with terms like these.

I think we should strike Geriatric from the dictionary. First of all, it sounds like some sort of insect that lives in the jungle or minimally, makes food rot when it gets near it. As much as I love the people who call themselves Geriatric Case Workers and Gerontologists I certainly don’t want to meet one or even have them over for dinner. I just can’t imagine being enthused as an older person by knowing that a Geriatric Case Worker is coming over this afternoon so a Gerontologist can assess what Special Care Center I would work best in.

Here’s the problem with this language: the language turns the older person into an object to be studied, evaluated, classified, catalogued and eventually filed away in a home somewhere. We wouldn’t even attempt this type of strategy with a young person graduating from college, an early 30’s professional, or a mature mid-level executive. All of the language used to describe those folks is really about their future. All of the language used to describe older folks is about their future as well…except the language just makes the future feel dismal and depressing. Language creates culture and the language we use for aging creates a fatalistic culture.

Why don’t we come up with some new words? As Boomers we could practice on our parents and embrace them fully as we age.

I’d rather have my Second Stage Life Strategist over for dinner than my Gerontologist anyway.

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

What if they won't talk about this?

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week and last week, author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Tuesday, April 24, 2007
What if they won't talk about this?

As I talk with folks around the country about their parents and how to help them as they age, one of the most common laments is that whenever they attempt to bring the subject of aging and care up, the parents either shut down completely or create a diversion. To tell the truth, I can't blame the parents for doing either. Most of the conversations begin with either assumptions or intrusions. Questions like "Have you considered a nursing home?" or the ever popular "Let's talk about selling this house before it gets to be too much." are really violations of the autonomy and freedom your parents are trying to hold on to.

Instead of trying to get your parents to agree to a DEFAULT position that you've created based on what YOU think is best for them why don't you let them DESIGN a situation that's best for THEM? It would make for a much less stressful situation and certainly one that's more interesting. But how, exactly, do you go about doing this?

Understand that some parents will never talk about this subject. Maybe those folks are your folks. If that is the case, get your name off everything that will make you legally accountable or responsible for them when they can't take care of themselves. If you don't you will have the mess of a lifetime to contend with. If they will talk about it, use the approach that we have created in The Parent Care Solution...The Six Conversations using the acronym C.A.R.E. The C is for Challenges, the A is for Alternatives, the R is for resources and the E. is for experience. Using this structure throughout the Six Conversations allows your parents to have complete control over the way their aging future looks. Your biggest job is to just listen and then see if you can help them implement it.

Here's why C.A.R.E works. Americans as a whole are stimulated by Challenges. Challenges bring out the best in us as a people. Parents are no exceptions. We always want to know what our Alternatives or options are for any challnge we face. As a people, we like options and are used to them. We have virtually unlimited Resources to face almost any situation and if we don't have them, we know someone who does. Finally, we want to completely design the Experience we have around most everything. Our long term care is no exception.

Try the C.A.R.E. approach if what you are doing isn't working. This just might do the trick.

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

What Do You Get When You Combine......

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week and last week, author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Monday, April 16, 2007
What Do You Get When You Combine......

What do you get when you combine Health Savings Accounts, the Privatization of Social Security, the decline of the traditional retirement plan and Arnold in California?

A National Health Care Program...that's what. Here's what Arnold knows as the president of the world's 7th largest econonomy: When you have 30% of the population who cannot access basic health care and housing for a long period of time what you get is cities that start to burn...slowly at first but more rapidly. Check out Buenos Aires, Santiago, Los Angeles, etc. for past reference.

Here's how I think it works down the road. It will more than likely be a payroll tax or a consumption tax that starts out small and gradually gets bigger as more exceptions are made to the program. Boomers and their children, at least the affluent ones probably get indexed out on an income or asset basis over time. The early sales pitch will be that everyone will now have access to healthcare shared by everyone's contribution. What you really end up with is a really bad version of Canada's much heralded National Health Care Program. It's not that Canada has a bad program. It has a good one if you have poor vision, a broken leg, or a sinus headache. It's not so great if you have cancer, liver failure, or need a heart transplant. In fact, at last count there were more MRI machines in Atlanta than in all of Canada. But....to the point: It's not that Canada tells you 'NO'. It just never tells you 'When'.

What this means is not greater opportunities for you and your parents. What it means is longer waiting lines, different doctors each time, lowest common denominator diagnostics, and a feeling that you just stepped into the back of some bus forever. Here's the real opportunity: New and different forms of individualized health delivery and wellness strategies on a fee for service basis. Think of this new system doing to health care what the internet did for the Post Office: Making it embarassed about raising its rates for doing less and less.

Call Arnold. Tell him not to come back with this idea.

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

A Parent Care Community: Old might not be so bad if....

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week and last week, author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Friday, April 06, 2007
A Parent Care Community: Old might not be so bad if....

I was reading the other day in one of those magazines about the best places to live and retire. You can't read one of those without Austin, Texas being listed as one of the top three. There are lots of reasons for that. Austin is young. It's cool. It's got great barbecue and music. It's hot in the summer and temperate in the winter. Besides having Lance Armstrong it's got one of the greatest hotels in the country...The Four Seasons Austin...great environment, service and hospitality. Izzy Sharpe should be proud.

It occurred to me that Boomers should have a place like that where they and their parents could live and hang out together without getting in each other's hair. A place where we could care ABOUT each other but not have to worry about caring FOR each other. A place where we could do extreme sports or extreme most anything. A place where technology allowed us to stay in touch with our children and grandchildren and a world of people who are looking for connection. A place where the smell of things in the fields overode the smell of things in the bedpan. A place where the brightness of the flowers could be seen by the dimmest of eyesight.

It could be a place where our future was something different than just remembering our past. A place where we could meet people who wanted to do things and talk about things and consider anything but the fact that we were getting older. It could be a place where the majority of our friends were under 40 because we have more energy than their 20 something friends. It could be a place where our dogs and cats and fish and horses stayed with us or near us for as long as they could. And if they couldn't or when they died, they would still be near.

It could have an artist in residence. Or even a wellness physician and perhaps a small clinic or hospital. A pharmacy and a place to get ice cream. We could continue to learn there either by professors who stopped by or their lectures on the web that became the new reason for town meetings. It could have someone who helped us understand why bad things happen to good people and in Emerson's words how "we sit in the lap of an Immense Intelligence." It could be a place where we talk more about the new friends we've met than the old ones who have died. it could be a place where truly our future was bigger than our past. It could be a place that does anything but encourage us to wait for Death to come calling. It could be a place where the architectural standards encouraged the accomodations of aging and made it possible for us to stay as long as we were here.

It could be a lot like I feel when I'm in Austin........

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

The Parent Care Movement- Something We Need To Begin

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Wednesday, April 04, 2007
The Parent Care Movement- Something We Need To Begin

What do you get when you combine the War In Iraq, The Gonzales Controversy, a 67,000 Page Internal Revenue Code, and Global Warming?

A Congress that is totally focused on everything but the single largest issue facing the future of the country...how to take care of the parents of 80 million Boomers who are going to live longer, spend more on health care and have less options of where to spend their final days than any other group in history. I am not at all convinced that if every nation on earth adopted the Kyoto Treaty that the one degree decline in temperature over 50 years would affect anything but the fattest furriest polar bear. I am convinced however, that if we don't start thinking about our parents we will be stepping over them in the streets and Depends will become the new growth stock. After all, the election year is only 18 months away and well...we do have sort of 20 years before all the parent stuff becomes sort of sticky.

Let's do this...let's just take control of this issue and resolve it for our parents and for ourselves. Let's start a Parent Care Movement that begins today and ends when the big issues like healthcare, places to live, medical records access, tax incentives, and every other issue facing us as we age are resolved.. Let's just write our Congress people on a state and federal level and tell them if they don't get moving on this we will just not let them have their jobs back. Get your employer, your pastor, your Kiwanis club, your e-mail network all working on this and get them doing it now.

We need care delivery systems that are transparent, efficient, and cost effective. We need more trained caregivers. We need corporations that add caregiving support as a benefit. We need courses on how to let us change our houses to stay in them as we age. We need places for our seniors to connect and communicate. We need aging facilities that look more like places we'd like to live instead of places we're afraid to die in. We need to get churches to hire nurses and caregivers and to build residences for their members to age in. We need technology to connect our shut ins to the world and alarm systems that let them reach out to us when they need us. We need CAREPETS(tm) to be companions to older people whose family and friends have forgotten about them. We need to bring every creative idea, impulse, innovation, and urge that would create a better future for our parents and us....and we need to start NOW!

We need to do anything and everything but wait on Washington to wake up......

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

New Ideas for Aging in Place

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Tuesday, April 03, 2007
New Ideas for Aging in Place

My feeling is that the Boomers are going to resist institutionalization as they age much like they did the Vietnam War....with protests and gunfire. This is true in part because there are simply not enough existing institutions for them even if they wanted to go, which they don't. What the Boomers will do is completely reinvent the notion of senior housing to not include the word "senior" in the same phrase as 'housing'. Let me give you an example.

Charlotte Roberts, the co-author with Peter Senge of the best seller, The Fifth Discipline, in the 90's has created a unique structure for single professional women as they age to live together in a common dwelling place, share communal meals, and both look after their lives and create community where they may not have one. The criteria is that they have to be able to take care of themselves, live independently, and do most of the daily things that aging, but healthy people do. The project is called Baldwin House and it is located in Statesville, NC. Charlotte and her sister Frankie, restored an old Southern home to create this environment. It has a full kitchen, meals provided, exercise capability, high tech components, and an environment for building relationships. While not for everyone, Baldwin House is just one of the models for independent-but-connected living that Boomers will be looking for as they age. My sense is that it will be a vibrant place for both relationship, community, and great conversation.

Charlotte Roberts is redefining the notion of what it is to age by redesigning the structures in which we consider aging. As Boomers, we will refuse to think of aging the way our parents did as well as choosing the housing options that they did. We want to custom design our later years much like we custom designed our lives. I don't know about you, but I think she's on to something.......

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

The Care Giver Shortage.....About a Million

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Monday, April 02, 2007
The Care Giver Shortage.....about a Million

Here's an interesting idea: What if the next 150K a year job in the 21st Century was a registered nurse? What if the next 75K a year job was a high end companion and caregiver? What if there were a waiting list for both of them and no one told you about it?

By some estimates we are short about 80,000 nurses over the next decade. Professional caregivers are even more in demand...almost 700,000 just to take take of the first wave of Boomers and their parents Just when you need the care...guess what....there may be no one there to provide it.

Here's the answer to this dilemma for you: Take a look at the health situation of your parents over the next few weeks and anticipate, all things being equal, if they wanted to stay at home while they "age in place", what kind of care would they need? Companionship, skilled nursing, non-medical assitance with daily living requirements? What about food service and transportation?

Get to know the caregiving businesses in your area like Senior's Choice, HomeInstead, Visiting Angels, or a Parent Care Specialist. Find out what their staffing is like and how soon someone could be available for your needs now or in the future? Find a medical practice that has a gerontology expert or at least someone that is focused on senior health issues. See if they are taking new patients.

One of the dangers in the next 25 years is we won't be able to access the care when we need it either at home or in a facility. The people you may have lover looked in the past few years on your way to somewhere important may be the very ones who will be able to allow you to stay in your home and that IS important.

One of the opportunties is to start putting together a business that employs just nurses, caregivers, and physican's assistants. Sounds like the prescription for the Full Employment Act for someone.

Posted by Dan Taylor

SimplyHome website

Churches as Elder Care "First Responders"

From Dan Taylor's Parent Care Solution Blog
[this week author Dan Taylor is our guest blogger; these are some of his past writings]

Thursday, March 29, 2007
Churches as Elder Care "First Responders"

Churches have and should play a dominant influencing role in community services for Boomers and their Parents. Whether it's a synagogue, parish, congregation, or Mormon Temple, faith based organizations cannot only protect their older members as they age but can actually shape policy on how communities deal with them. Churches have many reasons to do this, primarily that their tithing base tends to be made up of older, financially secure individuals, for whom the church is a source of connection, community, and inspiration. As these folks age and either age in place or transition to care facilities the possibility of tithe monies being diverted for the additonal at home care or paid to care facilities becomes more forseeable. The effect on the financial structure of the church could be potentially devastating. I think churches can respond in the following ways:

1. Create a Parent Care Counselor position inside the church either on a lay basis or a as paid staff member. The Parent Care Counselor as well as The Parent Care Solution have created ithe capability as one that is responsible for coordinating resources and being a refernce for church members for senior services both inside the church and the community. A Parent Care Counselor is trained in the Parent Care Conversations to be able to work with Boomers and their Parents inside the church.

2. Create Housing Opportunties. Churches have the ability to create assisted living, special care, transition housing, or adult day care opportunities for their members. My feeling is that churches should take this responsibilityand this opportunity on immediately. In additon to being an excellent investment for the church, the housing allows the church members to stay in community with each other. Politicians and Zoning officials will get on this bandwagon immediately. Who wants to be know as the person who vetoed Senior Housing for 5th Street Baptist.

3. Create a home health care agency inside the church. In the Parent Care Total Care Solution we advocate our professionals creating their own at home health care capability. This is necessary for a number of reasons including a current shortage of nurses, a projected shortage of nearly 700,000 healthcare workers, the looming retirement of nearly 40% of the Geriatric Physician community over the next ten years, and the fact that just when a congregation's members need health care, it may be difficult to access. A side benefit is that it is a wonderful source of revenue for the church and a way to connect with the children of the seniors.

There's a scriptural adage that not a sparrow falls that God doesn't know about. Maybe it's time to for the church to pay that kind of attention to its older sparrows.

Posted by Dan Taylor

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