My MIL is going to assisted living tomorrow

[herbgeek]

So, how does this sentiment help the OP?

I feel the same way as Jane. My nightmare scenario is being stuck in a room with someone who either talks or watches TV all day long and not having any silence. I hope it never comes to that personally but it could.

But my MIL is different from me, and I actually think she will like having people around to talk to, and not having to be responsible for bills, medications, figuring out what to eat and the like. She's going into what in MA is called a rest home: its not a nursing home, but its not separate private apartments. Its basically a group home of about 30 residents. She needs constant reassurance, even the daily calls from my husband with several times a week visits have not been enough.

[catherine]

I feel the same way as Jane. My nightmare scenario is being stuck in a room with someone who either talks or watches TV all day long and not having any silence. I hope it never comes to that personally but it could.

But my MIL is different from me, and I actually think she will like having people around to talk to, and not having to be responsible for bills, medications, figuring out what to eat and the like. She's going into what in MA is called a rest home: its not a nursing home, but its not separate private apartments. Its basically a group home of about 30 residents. She needs constant reassurance, even the daily calls from my husband with several times a week visits have not been enough.

I just feel that there are enough people out there who don't have any other options than to "guide" their parents into assisted living, and they feel really guilty about it, for no good reason. In a perfect world, the Powers That Be would realize it costs a LOT more money to "warehouse" elderly people in group homes than it would to provide home health care.

Would I rather die in my sleep hale and hearty in my own home at 92? Yes, of course. But I may well wind up in a rest home, or assisted living, or a convalescent hospital like my mother and grandmother. Who knows?

[SteveinMN]

In a perfect world, the Powers That Be would realize it costs a LOT more money to "warehouse" elderly people in group homes than it would to provide home health care.

The State of Minnesota realized this economic fact several years ago. In the county in which DH works (a suburb of the Twin Cities) there have been no new nursing homes built or expanded in more than a decade, and even group homes are not expanding significantly. The story is much the same in other counties around the state. It is much less expensive to have someone come in and assist the elderly in their own home than it is to move them to a facility that must meet different housing codes. Most of the people being served like being able to stay in their own homes, and that resolves questions like favorite meals or the presence of pets. There will, of course, be a need for folks who cannot live on their own even a little bit (memory-care, medical fragility, wheelchair-bound, etc.). But service in homes seems to be the way things are going here.

For now. A lot of the economics rests on finding personal care assistants who are willing to work with the elderly for $10-15/hour and no benefits. That's tough -- no agency around here has "staff on the bench" and I know that my relative with PCA needs has seen several shifts go unstaffed because it's hard to find someone who has the necessary skills (wound care, catheter flushing, etc.) who'll ride a bus for an hour in each direction for a 4-5 hour shift ending at 10:00 pm and gross $50 for the night. As more people age and demand increases, those wages will have to go up. That will skew the economics. But it's unlikely it will change the result -- it still will be less expensive to care for the elderly at home assuming they can safely stay home.