According to USA Today on Friday, July 20, Lays Potato Chip company will take advantage of Crowd Sourcing (the idea that “the crowd” can collectively come up with a better idea) to develop their next great potato chip flavor. If you come up with the winning idea you will win a prize of $1,000,000. You can read about it HERE and find the contest HERE When saw this article, I got to thinking that, maybe, at Senior Housing Forum we ought to try a similar experiment. Of course the single biggest problem Senior Housing Forum faces is that. . . well we don’t have $1,000,000 to give as a prize. About the best I can do is two $20.00 Jamba Juice or Starbucks Cards. So here is how our, “just for fun”, Senior Housing crowdsourcing experiment will work:
1. Post in the comments section of either this article or the comments for this article at Senior Housing Forum LinkedIn group, your best idea or ideas for the next generation senior housing community. It can be a building concept, an operational idea, an activity program, a cost savings program, a marketing idea or something else. It can be in the area of Independent living, Assisted Living, Skilled Nursing, or Memory care.
2. After two weeks I will take all of those ideas and put them up in the form of a survey where the two best ideas, as voted by the crowd, will each win a $20.00 Starbucks or Jamba Juice Card.
3. You can submit more than one idea and each one counts as an entry.
4. While I will post this article in multiple LinkedIn Groups, only the ideas posted in the comments section of this blog posting or posted in the Senior Housing Forum LinkedIn Group will be eligible.
5. Please feel free to share this contest with everyone you know.
Who knows: maybe some brilliant senior housing company will take the best of these ideas and create the very best senior housing community ever. Steve Moran
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Finally: If you know anyone who is looking at emergency call systems I would appreciate the opportunity to talk with them about Vigil Health Solutions.
From LinkedIn Groups
Group: Boomers: Aging Beats The Alternative
Discussion:Not $1,000,000 but something . .
Maybe this is actually a good idea. Seems to be the new trend, incentivize the public with a reward and let them go to work !
Posted by Lorie Eber
From LinkedIn Groups
Group: Senior Care Services Companies
Discussion:Not $1,000,000 but something . .
I’ve been saying this for a few years now, but i think the first MMAL is going to boom! – Medicinal Marijuana Assisted Living
Many of my AL colleagues laughed and joked about it with me, but with the medical landscape changing this would be something with immediate attention and media coverage. You wouldnt even have to advertise for the place cause it would be all over the news.
I have more “conceptual ideas” for this. Message me and lets become Millionaire’s
Posted by Steve “Hurricane” Weiss
I’m diggin’ the MMAL! We could go nationwide with it. The building itself would have to include aa bakery!
On a practical note…my husband and I have often wondered why there are no senior buildings connected to a Target, Walmart, Menards. Seniors could shop and work (if they want.)
Here’s an idea to see a CCRC retirement community that was truly intergenerational! It would have a daycare, grade school and high school attached. Residents could volunteer as much as they wanted in multiple areas. Kids would have weekly programs with the residents. One week the children could perform some songs for independent living, assisted living and skilled nursing. Another week they could go have an inter-generational ice cream social with all the levels of care. The other two weeks a month resident volunteers could help teach the children to read or give a history class to the older kids. High schoolers could work side by side with residents in a wood shop class,a sewing class or learn from the chef in a cooking class. From football, basketball, soccer, track and swimming in the olypmic size pool, residents could see all the sporting event competitions live. It would be wonderful and enriching to the residents and the children would become well rounded adults who truely admire and appreciate seniors in this world.
Posted by Diane Masson
Group: Senior Housing Forum (www.seniorhousingforum.net)
Discussion:Not $1,000,000 but something . .
Hi, Diane.
While I do believe that seniors enjoy the intergenerational opportunities, the model you speak of is very expensive to make work. That’s why you don’t see it in more locations now. I have studied this with 2 groups over the years and it just was cost prohibitive due to regulations, minimum staffing, etc.
I am usually one to encourage all new innovations, but here, unfortunately, it is much harder and more expensive than it seems. Maybe times have changed, who knows? Just sharing my experience on this.
Posted by David M. Zwald
An idea I have is to encourage unity amongst residents, family members and staff and to make the facility feel more like home(as well as to help the family members save money) would be to have a program in which the family members of the residents would be required to participate in the facility by having a volunteer type schedule where the family would be responsible for a certain amount of hours monthly in which they would participate in a task at the facility such has cooking a meal , gardening, recreational activites, hosting a special event such has movie night with popcorn, doing crosswords, laundry, Etc. I especially like the idea of a family member cooking a meal because the residents miss the food of their culture, it would be great to share that with fellow residents, and this would make the whole facility more like a big family instead of leaving it all up to the CNA.s. I think this would work best in smaller facilities with maybe 40 beds or less. The family members could receive a discount based on how many hours they put in.This would keep the residents happy, They would feel that connection with their family is still there and will help the family feel has though they are really contributing to the care of their loved one still. They will gain the help of the facility without feeling like they have dropped their loved one off and abandoned them. This will take away some control of the staff however I dont think that would be a bad thing.
Loretta..love your idea. Not only does it encourage involvement..but incentive for those where finances are a concern.
Group: Senior Housing Forum (www.seniorhousingforum.net)
Discussion:Not $1,000,000 but something . .
Steve: Here’s one for you… Victor Regnier, Dean of the USC School of Architecture, spoke to us at the ” 55+ Senior Living” Breakfast last week.. He showed us the Dutch model for care of “Old People” dating back to the 1640’s ! It truly is an “Aging in Place” system, with Health Care and things for Seniors to do from retirement on… See his definitive work “DESIGN FOR SENIOR LIVING”…He cites “Apartments for Life” in Rotterdam and Veldhoven, Holland: These “Apartments” come in a variety of sizes (and affordability, combininng services for the frail, with communal meals and activities…even shopping…He calls one service store “7-11 on steroids”, with emphasis on communal gardens, 500-1000s.f. apts, for sale or rent…even “meals on wheels” delivered to shut-ins. These are designed to bring dwellers of SFRs and Condos into a vigourous community, much beyond ” Sun City” !.
Posted by Dave Stolte
There is going to be an extraordinary number of older single women in the future. I propose that we form “Golden Girls” type communities of small group homes with like-minded women being “roommates.” Most women receive less Social Security than their male-counterparts. Women usually outlive their mates and many women are choosing not to marry now as well. By banding together, these women can pool their resources and have greater purchasing power. They can share expenses on housing, utilities, food, home care and transportation services. They can also support each other socially and emotionally. The special homes would be retrofitted for accessibility and new technologies can keep them connected with their families/doctors/etc. A model could be developed that interviews women and holds “socials” so ladies can find out which other women they would be compatible with. If things don’t work out, there could be a mechanism for opting out or going to a different community and getting a replacement. Betty White is STILL an inspiration!
Not sure how new this idea is, but with the developments personal health IT and community health, I think there is a great opportunity to leverage social health monitoring and exercise at a facility level encouraging all of the seniors on site to be more active and to help oversee others health. This could leverage commonly available technology – iPhones, xBox with Kinect for fitness and health monitoring. Could be specially useful communities with high incidence of type II diabetes.
Cheers
Drew
I would like to see more outside engagement and tapping into the youth. There is a wealth of knowledge and incredible experiences to be gained from listening to our seniors, yet the gap is so large, it becomes difficult. We have tried to bridge this gap by making media and short videos about Senior Living that may appeal to a younger audience, at least in a visual way on the internet.
-Kyle Murphy | YSCN.org (Your Senior Care Network)