By Steve Moran
We asked senior living professionals, residents, and their families to give us a list of things that senior living operators do that they think are OK, maybe even think are great ideas, but are, in reality, awful. Here is the list:
- Assign seating for residents during meals and activities.
- Create mandated break times that help the community but are terrible for staff — like a lunch break at 10 am or 2 pm.
- Set break times for staff instead of at times that works for them and what they are doing at the time.
- Set narrow meal times for residents.
- Impose medication times that are terrible for residents (is it ever okay to have a 6 or 7 am med pass time?)
- Allow bullying to happen (residents on resident, resident on team member, or team member to team member).
- Accept a culture of negativity (including leaders).
- Require all memory care residents to be enrolled in a hospice program.
- Not allow medical or recreational use of marijuana.
- Prohibit families from visiting if there are any active Covid cases.
- Promote the idea that risk reduction/elimination is the most important job of the community.
- Adopt QMs that do not really indicate quality (though not sure most communities think this is a good idea).
- Allow those who abuse to avoid significant personal consequences.
- Require that a resident can give away assets and be denied Medicaid, but discharge for non-payment may not be allowed if discharge to the family is “unsafe”.
- “Force” residents to sign a one-sided contract that gives nearly all rights to the community.
- Prohibit hanging around outside the dining room prior to meals.
- Prohibit alcohol or limit access to alcohol.
- Require masks when residents are sitting next to each other in the living room or in an activity, but no masks when they’re sitting together at meals.
- Require doctor’s orders for alcohol.
- Prohibit residents from working in communities.
- Disallowing residents from leading programs.
- Limit the number of rolls of toilet paper a resident gets each week.
- Take residents’ suggestions lightly.
- Hold special events that need to be staffed by salaried leaders with no consideration for the needs of those being required to stay late.
- Maintain policies forbidding romantic relationships between team members.
- Keep a resident at a lower level of care (or higher level of care) for economic reasons.
What would you add to this list?