November 29, 2001
Department of Aging is putting together a guide to nursing homes
By Carol Bogart
Staff Writer
People grappling with whether to seek long-term care for a loved one should soon have a new resource to help them make decisions. The state Department of Aging is putting together a guide for those looking for a nursing home for themselves or for someone else.
In recent years, improved understanding of the aging brain has resulted in improved facilities for those no longer able to care for themselves. Today, services range from specialized Alzheimers units to pet therapy.
A care center's emphasis on hiring staff sensitive to an elderly person's unique needs can help lift the guilt felt by adult children who decide it's time to put their mother or father in a nursing home.
In Tiffin, some residents of various care centers say they enjoy individualized attention, freedom from lifelong responsibilities like laundry and caring for lawns, the companionship of others their own age, weekly church services and social activities -- activities like trips to local restaurants and visits from area school children.
For many seniors, however, the spectre of winding up in a nursing home still constitutes one of their worst fears.
People in declining health may fear loss of the house where they raised their kids, freedom to come and go as they choose, their own church, neighborhood, friends, a dog or cat.
Some who are entering the twilight of their lives have watched elderly parents languish and die in then-substandard care centers. They worry about understaffing, indifference and neglect -- even outright abuse. Memories linger of news of nursing home fires where immobile elderly died because routine maintenance had been neglected.
Acknowledging such fears, the Ohio Department of Aging is paying for a project designed to find out how those now living in nursing homes feel about their facility. As many as 50,000 residents will be asked what they do and don't like. Their answers are to be used in a planned Long-Term Care Consumer Guide.
Other information to be included: the facility's location, size, special programs and services, costs and accepted sources of payment.
The guide is to be published on the Internet March 1, 2002 (www.ohio.gov/age/). It will link directly to long-term care facilities' Web sites and will also link to numerous other resources and aging services.
Vital Research LLC, a Los Angeles company, is in overall charge of the $600,000 project. Vital Research has prior experience measuring quality of life among residents living in nursing homes throughout the country through its contract with the National Institute of Health.
Green Thumb Inc., Ohio -- an organization that finds jobs for older workers -- will be responsible for one-on-one interviews with nursing home residents.
Roughly 60 people are to be hired to record the answers of the nursing home residents. Those interested in the positions may want to contact Green Thumb. In Lima, the number is (419) 222-3118.
Joan Lawrence, director of the Ohio Department of Aging, says the interviews "will provide extremely useful information for families considering future options for an aging loved one."
The department's Jim Villella notes that every nursing facility in the state will be included, adding, "enough residents will be interviewed to make the study statistically valid."
Villella explains there will be too much data to produce hard copies of the entire study, buts says a consumer in, say, Pennsylvania who has a parent in Tiffin will be able to search "Seneca County" and print all information related to the county's long-term care facilities.
In addition to interviews with nursing home residents, Villella says a separate study is planned for interviewing families of residents.
When the guide is ready, people who don't own a computer can access the information via computers at libraries, schools and senior citizen centers.