Senior Housing News Top 10 Senior Housing Trends for 2011
Senior Housing News wrote an awesome article about the senior living trends for 2011, and we loved it. So much in fact, we wanted to go through each of the trends and talk about how we are working hard to keep up with the fast-moving eldercare industry. We definitely recommend you take a look at the original article, but we went ahead and summarized each point here just in case. Thanks for reading!
1. Economics 101 – Supply Decreases, Demand Increases….News Flash: Prices will go up for Independent Living, Assisted Living and Nursing Care
The Trend
The number of older Americans is increasing faster than new senior living facilities can be constructed, meaning existing facilities will increase their rates, putting pressure on seniors living on fixed incomes to make ends meet.
What Response Care is doing
Our wireless nurse call and personal emergency systems are priced right. Because we do things the right way from factory floor on up, we are able to offer our products at prices that allow facilities to keep living rates lower and ease pressure on our fixed income seniors.
2. 3 – R’s of Senior Housing – Rehab, Renovate, Repurpose
The Trend
Because senior living rates are on their way up, seniors and their families need to start getting creative with senior living options. According to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, home renovation is expected to enjoy double digit growth rates as Americans find creative ways to make the most of their current living arrangements.
What Response Care is doing
While Response Care does not sell in-home monitoring products, our products are perfect to help senior living facilities do some renovation and repurposing of their own. Whereas a new installation of a traditional nurse call system often takes weeks for installation, a Response Care system is easily and quickly installated, making it a perfect retrofit solution to upgrade an obsolete nurse call system.
3. Technology – Monitoring Networks, Apps, Devices and Systems Integrators
The Trend
Let’s just let the people at Senior Housing News do the talking on this one:
“Look for continued announcements and product offerings from old and new technology companies as well as acquisitions and roll ups of related products and services for the senior care market. Some products will be “me too” products that will provide additional market choices but few, real new features. Who will win? We’re betting on well designed products that are simple without feature overload at reasonable prices.”
What Response Care is doing
We couldn’t agree more with what Senior Housing News has to say. The market is flooded with “me too” companies reselling another company’s products at high markups. Furthermore, there are overcomplicated systems touting features that only work in labs, not for real caregivers helping real seniors.
Response Care is not a "me too" company, nor do we tout overcomplicated features that don't work. Our products are completely unique, and are sold absolutely nowhere else. We don’t tout high-tech features as solutions because we know that the only solution to eldercare is good caregivers given the right tools to do their jobs. Our R-Cube system is well designed, with focus on simplicity and accessibility. We’re proud of our easy-to-use products, and we stand by our solutions as the best in the business.
4. Campus Extensions and Home Healthcare
The Trend
Senior living chains really took off in 2010, as senior living facilities have taken to regional and national organizational structures to save costs.
What Response Care is doing
Perhaps the biggest reason that these regional and national organization structures are thriving is because they are able to take proven caregiving and facility administration practices, and apply them to a large number of facilities. That’s why at Response Care, we are working with these chains to get our cost-saving systems implemented on a broad level to help the most seniors and their caregivers as possible.
5. Finance & Capital Markets – Chicken or the Egg
The Trend
The two options for financing, banks and governments, are getting more and more selective about who they are lending their money to.
What Response Care is doing
This one is a little out of our hands, but we do continue to offer our systems at the best prices in the business so that facilities can decrease the amount of borrowing they have to do.
6. Government - Healthcare & Entitlement Reform
The Trend
Government as a whole is strapped for cash, and cuts are going to need to be made. Healthcare is already one of the biggest hot button topics, and as cuts are made, don’t expect senior living money to be immune to budget slashing.
What Response Care is doing
Would we sound too much like a broken record if we emphasized our competitive pricing again? Well regardless of how vinyl-sounding we might be, we offer the best systems at the best prices, and that can’t be said enough.
7. Home Prices – Lending Constraints and Mortgage Interest Deduction
The Trend
While things are looking up for 2011, the housing market is as volatile as ever, and as senior living rates are tied directly to home prices, the senior living market will continue to feel effects from the unstable housing market.
What Response Care is doing
Ok, we’ll give you a break on this one. If you haven’t heard us say enough about our affordable, simple to use products, just look at our thoughts on trends 1, 5, and 6.
8. Local is Cool – Local, Face-to-face social networks make a comeback
The Trend
The growth of social media isn’t going to stop anytime soon, and in 2011 more and more seniors and baby boomers are going to get on board. However, there is no replacement for face to face contact and local solutions are often going to be the best solutions.
What Response Care is doing
We just got into social media ourselves this year (Follow us on twitter @ResponseCare), and we love how easily we can build relationships with people who care about eldercare across the nation. But we also realize that social media isn’t for everyone, which is why we have built relationships with distributors who know their local markets better than anyone else. This means that when you buy a Response Care system, it’s going to be installed and serviced by someone nearby, not a company across the nation that doesn't understand your local market. Furthermore, we have scheduled appearances at national trade shows from Nevada to New York to Florida, so we can get that good old fashioned face to face contact. Check out our 2011 trade show schedule to see when we’re coming to a show near you.
9. Architecture & Design
The Trend
Many traditional senior living facilities have a drab, institutional look that hurts morale for both seniors and their caregivers. The trend in 2011 will be to replace these dull looks with architecturally pleasing ones that make senior living facilities feel like home.
What Response Care is doing
We don’t like institutional looking facilities either, and that’s why we just released our line of GreenCall Sconce Notification Lighting to replace dull dome lights. We worked with a national leader in changing the way we think about senior living to develop attractive sconce lights that give any facility a more homelike feel.
10. Go Long Grannie Stocks
The Trend
Senior Housing stocks will continue to rise as they did in 2010.
What Response Care is doing
The only thing we spend our investment money on is improving our systems in whatever way we can. As much as we like to think we have thought of every feature a facility might want, we are often approached with ideas for new features and better ways of doing things. So we take this input and we use to it to make our systems even more user-friendly.
Actual story: One of our distributors approached us one morning wanting a better way to organize test and inspection reports for their facilities. We immediately realized that this would be a valuable feature to all of our distributors, and set out to integrate this into our R-Cube system. So we did, and now our R-Cubes have automated Test and Inspection reports that can quickly be generated at any time. While most companies might take weeks or years to implement a similarly complex feature, we had that distributor's systems updated that very afternoon! Just another way we work every day to provide the best systems money can buy.
Conclusion
Firstly, we want to thank Senior Housing News for putting together such a comprehensive and interesting top 10 trends list for 2011. We look forward to doing our part as a piece in the ever-changing eldercare puzzle. If you liked what we had to say, we strongly encourage you to see more of what we are about or contact us toll free at 1-888-724-1911.