Are you concerned about placing your loved one in a nursing home or assisted living facility?
Most senior living communities closed their dining halls, stopped group activities, and restricted movement of their residents as a way to prevent the disease’s spread.
This has taken an emotional and physical toll on residents and their families.
While safety precautions are necessary, the size of the community may be one of the bigger risk factors.
What if I told you there was a another option…
A Better Option
There is a new model that offers unique advantages when dealing with risk from pandemics such as COVID-19 as well as the common flu. Residential Assisted Living (RAL) offers all the specialized care for your loved ones in the comfort of a home.
RALs have been around for years but have received a lot of attention due to their unique benefits when dealing with breakouts of illnesses.
Here are some of the top reasons RALs are safer when dealing with COVID-19 or outbreaks of illnesses such as the flu.
Less Traffic
With only 14 residents, there are far less support staff needed. Therefore, the number of people entering the building on a daily basis is greatly reduced. Having a smaller number of staff provides a better opportunity to have dedicated staff to a single community. While many traditional facilities use caretakers that are shared with other facilities. Limiting daily foot traffic has been proven to be one of the biggest factors to keeping viruses from entering the senior communities.
More Individualized Care
As shown in the previous section, most RALs have 1 caregiver for every 4 residents. This enables the staff to take more frequent temperature checks and closely monitor the residents for any early signs or symptoms. Additionally, caregivers can develop much closer relationships with residents and are able to detect eating, sleeping or other changes in their behavior.
According to The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), residents receive a higher quality of care with high staff to resident ratios – as provided by most RALs.
Less Area Requiring Disinfection
RALs do not have a large lobby, recreation rooms, or multiple dining halls; thereby having much less surface area in their common areas to disinfect. A typical RAL has approximately 5,000 sq. ft., while a large facility housing 80-100 residents could have more than 100,000 sq. ft. to disinfect. Less area to disinfect = less risk.
Better Filtration
Having a smaller building provides more cost-efficient options for air filtration. Our four air handling units are equipped with HEPA and UV-C filtration. HEPA filters remove 99.97% of dusts, spores, bacteria, and other particulates. The UV-C filters destroy viruses and remove odors through its germicidal ultraviolet system.
Outdoor Space
Residents will not need to be isolated in their rooms, even during a lockdown. Our secured outdoor space enables them to get out and get some fresh air! We make it our mission to ensure everyone has time to get outside if they want to. This secured outdoor space is also available for the kids and grandkids to safely play.
Direct Access to Video Chat
If you are unable to make a personal trip, we offer a variety of other methods to connect with your loved ones. We can connect through a web conferencing tool (such as Zoom or Skype) on a smart phone, tablet, or in the privacy of their bedroom on their smart TV (standard in all rooms).
Summary
The choice to commit to an assisted living facility for a loved one’s care can be a very stressful decision. This decision is more difficult during a pandemic such as COVID-19.
RALs have less traffic (residents and staff) and less square footage to disinfect. Additionally, the lower caregiver to resident ratio provides for closer monitoring of the residents for early detection of any changes in their conditions, eating, sleeping or behavior. RALs have been shown to also reduce the level of stress and depression.
Our home has been uniquely designed to reduce the risk of infections through HEPA and UV-C air filtration and by separating the flow of clean and dirty materials.
Contact us here for a private tour of our boutique personal care home.