Sunrise Senior Living now offers a new informational guide to help seniors and their families identify ideas for affording senior care in today’s challenging economy. The guide, called Affording Senior Living: The Financial Options, is available at Sunrise communities nationwide and also online at www.sunriseseniorliving.com/financialoptions .
The Affording Senior Living Guide gives tips for families and helps to identify a variety of financial products that are available in the marketplace today to help families who need access to senior care, but are unsure how they will pay for it.
Affording Senior Living: The Financial Options incldues information about the following:

Traditional options such as investments, savings and income
Real estate options such as home equity loans and reverse mortgages
Insurance options such as long term care insurance and life settlements
Government options such as Veterans’ Benefits and Medicare

Medicare beneficiaries who require assistance with three or more activities of daily living account for up to one-quarter of all Medicare Part A and B spending. This despite the fact they constitute only 7% of the Medicare population, according to a new analysis.

These beneficiaries consume roughly $18,902 each—nearly 4.5 times as much as beneficiaries without disabilities, a new report from Avalere Health finds. Post-acute care services and some other Medicare services that transition beneficiaries from acute to long-term care settings may be soaking up Medicare funds, according to the report. Palliative and hospice care services, both covered by Medicare, experienced significant increases in length of stay between 2000 and 2005 for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. This suggests that these services are filling a gap in long-term care for demanding beneficiaries.

Avalere Health conducted the study on behalf of The SCAN Foundation.

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.—An 82-year-old woman is missing from an Orange County assisted living home, and a sheriff’s official calls her disappearance “highly suspicious.”
Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said Wednesday Sara Mowry left behind her walker, purse, hearing aids and medication at the home in Laguna Niguel, making it unlikely that she left on her own.

Mowry’s son reported her missing on Tuesday, when he called her and she didn’t answer, then visited the home and couldn’t find her.

Amormino says Mowry has no dementia or other mental trouble that might lead her to disappear on her own.

Authorities say they are looking at inconsistencies in Mowry’s bank accounts, and searching for a silver 2002 Toyota Tacoma pickup, but would not say how it might be connected to Mowry’s disappearance.

Emeritus Corp. said it’s closed on its $65 million purchase of five assisted living facilities. The Seattle company said it bought the facilities for $62.5 million, plus transaction costs of $3.3 million, from Ventas Inc., of Chicago. The facilities are located in four states and consist of 432 units.

“We are pleased that, despite the current turmoil in the financial markets, this transaction closed on time and with favorable financing,” said Granger Cobb, Emeritus president and co-CEO, said in a statement.

Emeritus now has 302 assisted living and Alzheimer’s care facilities in 36 states, with 26,700 units and 31,600 residents.

1. Daily Living Plan: Make sure the assisted living or senior living facility offers lots of activities that allow residents to be active. They should include great socializing events, exercise classes, educational seminars, religious services, and outings.
2. Medical Staff: Check to see who the resident geriatrician is and what credentials the nurses have. There should be an ambulance service and a quality hospital nearby with the patients’ medical charts. Also check to see that menus are approved by a nutritionist;
3. Talk to residents!!!!: Ask current residents for their opinion on the facility and services. You can get the best information for the residents! The will tell you the good and the bad of the place.
4. Room Accomidations and Facility Basics: Make sure the facility has showers with moveable showerheads, handrails, good lighting, emergency electricity generators, emergency help buttons and adequate personnel.

Approximately 3.8 million seniors reside in some type of aging services facility, according to the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. They live in roughly 17,000 nursing homes, 39,500 assisted-living facilities, 2,250 continuing care retirement communities, and other senior housing units.

The distressed housing market, and a deepening recession threaten a huge decline in the senior housing indusrty . Across the spectrum of senior housing; life-care communities, assisted living facilities, and nursing homes people at all levels of income are dealing with financial challenges.

Primary residences are the greatest source of wealth for most retirees, and the sale of those homes is the most common way to generate retirement-community entrance fees, which range from $100,000 at the low end, upwards of $500,000 and much more at the highest-end communities.

Income from pensions and investments is a major source of monthly maintenance payments across the spectrum of senior housing. Financial support from children and other family members often enables retirement home occupants to make ends meet.

The average daily cost of a private room in a nursing home in the United States stayed essentially the same as last year, according to the 2008 MetLife Market Survey of Nursing Home & Assisted Living Costs. The average rate for a private room is $77,380 a year, or $212 a day, an increase of one dollar from last year. Meanwhile, assisted living costs increased 2.1 percent from an average of $2,969 monthly or $35,628 annually in 2007, to $3,031 monthly or $36,372 annually in 2008.

The survey also reports on the cost of a semi-private room in a nursing home, which increased 1.1 percent to $191 a day, or $69,715 a year, a 3 percent increase over last year.

Once again, the highest rates for a private nursing home room in 2008 were found in Alaska, where the cost is $577 a day on average. The lowest rates were found in the non-metropolitan and non-suburban areas of Louisiana, at $127 a day. The cost of assisted living was the highest in southern Maine at $4,708 per month and the lowest in North Dakota at $1,980 per month.

Sunrise Senior Living Inc. lost nearly a quarter of their value Monday and hit a seven-year low.The drop came against the backdrop of a steep market sell-off.

The company’s stock fell $2.55, or 19 percent, to $10.85. Earlier in the session, the stock sank to $9.51, a level not seen since April 2001. The shares have lost more than a third of their value in the past month and are down nearly 60 percent in 2008.

Analyst Derrick Dagnan of Avondale Partners said the company’s stock decline evidently exceeded that of other senior living companies because of ongoing concerns that it is not as sound as some of its peers.

“A lot of that has to do with the company’s emerging from a period where they just restated two years’ worth of accounting results and filed statements that had been past due,” Dognan said. “Management’s done a great job of getting this company back on track, but there are still a lot of questions.”

He cited issues involving its development project in Germany, significant writedowns and poor performances by its hospice and development businesses.

Sunrise on Sept. 10 reported a $31.8 million loss for the second quarter and said it had scaled back its planned openings of new centers to between 1,200 to 1,400 units from an earlier target of 3,200 to 3,400 units. It also wrote off $10.5 million of costs relating to discontinued development projects during the quarter.

The $700 billion bailout plan signed by the president last week is likely to have a positive effect on long-term care housing, according to an expert from the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.

“The bailout should ease the credit crunch which is currently playing havoc with both the debt and equity markets that are so essential to tax credits,” affordable housing expert Nancy Libson from AAHSA, told McKnight’s.

“Many deals already in the works to build or renovate senior housing are looking for new equity investors,” she said. “Equity investors, if they stay in deals, are adjusting (reducing) their investments. When debt financing is necessary, interest rates are rising, making deals infeasible. The bill should provide relief in the debt and equity markets, providing a more stable financial system for this vital service for seniors.”

The legislation, which drew both praise and scorn from members of Congress, passed through the House after two weeks of heated debate and more than one failed vote. Finally, 172 Democrats and 91 Republicans gave their approval. The president signed it on Friday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had hoped at least 100 Republicans would vote for the measure in order to portray the bailout as being truly bipartisan

The administrator of Specialty LifeCare Service, an assisted living facility in Kernville, was charged Tuesday with stealing $50,600 from a 91-year-old resident’s bank account.

Debra Zilch, 42, of the 900 block of Belmont Street, voluntarily appeared for arraignment before District Judge Michael Musulin on charges of theft, receiving stolen property and forgery.

She was released on $25,000 recognizance bond. A preliminary hearing will be held Sept. 30.

Zilch allegedly stole a checkbook from the resident’s room and began writing checks to herself, a Cambria County detective, alleged in an affidavit.

Detective Kevin Price charged that Zilch wrote 20 checks between May 21 and Aug. 6 in amounts ranging from $1,000 to $6,000.

Zilch, who is part-owner of the facility at 429 Napoleon St., said she had taken a voluntary leave from her duties.

“I’ve never done anything like this before. I will repay the money. I am not a mean person,” she said in a telephone interview.

She did not discuss a motive for taking the money. She said that she is hiring a Johnstown attorney to represent her in the case.

Zilch allegedly admitted going into the resident’s room and taking what the man described as an old checkbook from a drawer. The resident told Price and Jennifer Anderson, an investigator from the Area Agency on Aging, that he had given no one, including Zilch, permission to write checks or take money from his account.

The man revealed that she had talked with him a few days before he was interviewed by the investigators and admitted she took his money.

At that time, she signed a note that was notarized by another woman, agreeing to pay him back at the rate of $2,000 a month.

“I have apologized and explained my situation. (The resident) graciously forgave me for my wrongdoing,” Zilch said in the signed note.

The theft came to light after another resident reported to the aging agency in early September that someone had stolen a large amount of money from a resident’s checking account, Price said.

It was learned during the investigation that First National Bank – where the man had his money – had notified the resident that his checking account had been overdrawn.

Price credited the agency investigator and the bank with bringing the alleged theft to the attention of the district attorney’s office.