We asked leaders in the Senior Care Industry to determine what critical issues they are facing. Following are just some of the many answers given to us by the CEOs of Continuing Care Retirement Communities, and they highlight concerns specific to individual communities, and the senior care industry at large.

• Do we stick with traditional Assisted Living as a level of care, or provide the services to deliver home care to apartments and cottages?
• How to we effectively deal with the new residents’ expectations to be included on almost every aspect of decision making, while honoring the older residents’ minds that new residents will not “take over”?
• Recruitment, retention & management of “world class” staff.
• Create a community wide wellness culture.
• Overcoming the stigma relating mental and emotional health.
• Residents hiding or denying disabilities in order to remain designated as Independent.

• The lack of expertise nationwide within Senior Living Care management. The ability to operate highly diverse and complex organizations. I see a shortage in our future.
• Having a preventative wellness centered operations model, as opposed to the restorative health care centered model to permeate our business. This way, future marketing efforts can be centered on how healthy one will stay / maintain / become while at a CCRC. Not that one will “go down in style” with chronic and progressive debilitation.
• We must find a way to make reliable predictions as to how people will age, and how they will pass away, in order to continue to price our entrance fees correctly, also to order the right service models in the right sized and designed buildings. The $64,000 question: how to we do it?
• We continue to treat residents and staff as commodities; it’s the cancer of our industry.