Technology Helps Seniors Stay at Home Longer

Eighty-five year old Sam’s family and friends feared this was it. Sam, who lives alone, had fallen again and this time, he fractured his back. Days later as he was lying in the hospital bed wearing a back brace, he asked out loud what everyone had been thinking, “Will I ever go home again?”

Fast forward two months and Sam is at home. He went through rehab and then stayed a month in assisted living. His friends “elder-proofed” his home. He has telemedicine appointments with caregivers; a heart monitoring device; a medical alert device; a device that calls people on voice command and reminds him when to take medications; a doorbell with a camera; and smartphone apps for Uber and meal deliveries. It isn’t all high-tech — he also has a weird-looking plastic device to help him put on his socks and shoes.

Sam loves being home. He is entertaining visitors again and walking to church and the park on his own. It’s all good for Sam and his loved ones. But maybe not so good for the assisted living facility that lost a resident who was paying $6,900 a month. Sam represents the growing aging-at-home movement, which has gained momentum during the pandemic.

An AARP survey found that 76% of older adults want to age in place. In addition to the desire to be at home and near family and friends, there is also an economic incentive. The median cost of assisted living is about $4,500 a month, according to a 2020 Genworth survey. Nursing homes cost more than twice that.

Some see this shift affecting the assisted living industry.

Joe Coughlin, who leads the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab, has written on the potential impact of “virtual” assisted living where technologies make it easier for seniors to stay at home and their loved ones and caretakers to check in with them.

“The implications for the senior housing industry are both immediate and longer term. The discussion, let alone the decision, to move to senior living can now be delayed by many. While showing modest improvement, senior housing resident numbers, down since the pandemic, are likely to experience a sluggish recovery not necessarily due to continued pandemic fears, but due to tech-enabled services that families and older adults see as an alternative to moving,” Coughlin wrote recently on the AgeLab site. (https://agelab.mit.edu/home-logistics-and-services/blog/call-it-virtual-assisted-living-seniors-can-stay-in-their-own-homes)

Seniors staying at home longer will have an effect but is not likely to put a major dent in the senior care industry. The population of seniors continues to grow. According to the U.S. Census, 1 in 5 persons in the U.S. will be over 65 years old by 2030.

According to July data from the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC), demand for senior housing continues to outweigh the supply. Occupancy, which fell during the pandemic, has improved for all housing types for the last four consecutive quarters, with assisted living showing the largest second quarter gain. “The sector has not fully recovered from occupancy losses during the height of the pandemic, but the continued upward occupancy trend despite workforce and supply challenges is a positive sign,” said Chuck Harry, NIC’s chief operating officer.

James McNitt, healthcare market leader at insurance brokerage Risk Placement Services (RPS), views the at-home movement as a positive development: “I think the rising tide’s going to lift all the boats. The aging patient population is growing across the board. I look at it more as being an alternative to these facilities, which may become over-occupied or at full occupancy, which is what they’d like. They don’t want to over-occupy, but they all want to be operating in full occupancy. You can drive through any small town in America and see new senior living facilities being built.”

Jason Zuccari, vice president of business development at Hamilton Insurance in Fairfax, Virginia, which specializes in the senior care market, notes that while staying at home appeals on certain levels, seniors home alone may suffer loneliness and miss out on the benefits of human interaction: “Yes, you have all these different monitoring methods, but remember assisted living is a lower acuity community. The whole purpose of moving there is for socialization and being around other people. So while we have better communication in Zoom, people still like being able to go to dinner with their friends. People still like to have activities to do with their friends.”