As McKnight’s Senior Living marks its 20th anniversary, what’s ahead for senior living? John O’Connor, editorial director, vice president and associate publisher, said he sees three major challenges for the industry.
“One is the ‘frenemy’ status with home care. It’s going to be interesting to see to what extent home care and senior living work together versus compete against each other,” he said.
A second big issue for the industry, O’Connor said, is finding a way to serve middle-income individuals, those whose incomes aren’t high enough to afford to live in most existing senior living communities but are too high to qualify for Medicaid. “Solving that is going to remain challenging for economic reasons and some others as well,” he said.
A third big challenge, O’Connor said, is “something I predicted 20 years ago that still hasn’t happened” — the prospect of federal regulation.
“Back then,” he continued, “I said it was inevitable that assisted living was going to become a federally regulated business, and my rationale then as now was, you have a very large customer base of older adults with various health conditions who are trusting an option in the market to help them get through their final years in as much comfort and dignity is possible. To me, it’s mind-blowing that for as many things as our government regulates, it doesn’t regulate that kind of activity.”
