If you are looking for senior living options for yourself or a loved one, you undoubtedly wish to find the most qualified care available. However, this can feel like an insurmountable task at times. There are so many senior living facilities out there, all touting an even greater number of services and care levels with confident verbiage.
How can you determine which options are qualified?
To do so, you must look beyond the web copy and focus on the actual offerings and all they entail. By paying attention to a few key elements, you can start separating the wheat from the chaff to find the most qualified senior care.
A Continuum of Care
Part of offering qualified care is understanding and anticipating the needs of those who receive it. The right senior care option depends greatly on where someone is in their life, the state of their overall health, and a number of other factors. Further, these needs may change as time goes on, health fluctuates, and abilities are affected with age. The right senior living community should anticipate these differing and evolving needs by providing a continuum of care, i.e., a variety of lifestyle and care options that accommodates them.
A continuing care retirement community (CCRC) should offer a broad range of options, such as independent living (for those who are mostly self-sufficient but seek a more carefree retirement) to assisted living (for those who need some extra support throughout the day) to memory care (for those who require a safe and supportive setting for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia). By choosing a community that offers all of these options and more, a new resident can be sure that they will receive the right support both right now and in the future.
Proper Licensing and Qualifications
To ensure a community offers qualified care, you must determine whether they have received the proper licenses and that their care exceeds regulatory expectations. For example, in order to achieve licensing as a CCRC, a CCRC must prove to the Department of Social Services of their respective state that they abide by all standards and guidelines. If such a qualification is not listed on a community’s website, be sure to reach out and ask for verification.
Additionally, they must not only meet but exceed the expectations of care. For example, skilled nursing units are frequently surveyed by a third party. This survey is essentially an external review that factors in the quality of provided care, the satisfaction of residents, and more. Be sure to ask for the results of recent such surveys to make sure that care not only meets but exceeds local standards of quality.
If you would like to learn more about an Ontario Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) with full licensing and record-breaking success in a recent skilled nursing survey, contact Inland Christian Home. Call us today at (909) 983-0084 or reach us online.