A: Yes, but it will require new approaches and housing products that will address both the continuing challenges caused by COVID and changing older adult consumer expectations and preferences.

The senior living industry continues to have operational and occupancy challenges, but there is good news: the baby boomers. The oldest baby boomer now is 76 years old. The youngest are only 57, but by 2030, all boomers will be at least 65 years old. The boomers are healthier, more active, wealthier and living longer than previous generations. This cohort has the capacity to significantly increase the prospect pool for senior living, but their expectations and preferences are different from previous generations.

Many already likely are familiar with existing senior housing, as they have had to help parents navigate the search for housing and healthcare options — and they do not want what their parents have. They already may have some negative perceptions or misconceptions about senior living. Now is the time for new, next-generation senior living products and services and new market positioning strategies.

The baby boomers are focused on health, wellness and fitness, and maintaining independence is a priority. They want more customizable spaces, higher-quality finish-outs, premium amenities and flexible service options. They are less attached to their “stuff” and more interested in embracing more purposeful living and experiences with people like themselves. Due to the pandemic, their health also is at the front of their minds. How to be prepared for future healthcare issues also will be an important consideration to be addressed with this next generation of older adults.

Lynne Moore is president of MDS Research Company Inc., a national senior living and healthcare consulting firm based in Fort Worth, TX, that has been serving clients for 48 years. MDS is a two-generation company — she is following in Jim Moore’s footsteps. Lynne Moore is responsible for all MDS market research-related projects involving all aspects of senior housing and healthcare. Lynne Moore can be reached at (817) 731-4266 or lynnemoore@m-d-s.com.

Read more guest columns here.

As Westerville, OH-based Ohio Living celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, President and CEO Larry Gumina recently spent a few minutes with McKnight’s Senior Living Editor Lois A. Bowers talking about the need for long-term care providers to innovate, grow and show appreciation to employees.

Q: Congratulations on the 100th anniversary of Ohio Living. What do you believe have been the keys to the organization’s longevity?

A: I’ll tell you without hesitation, it’s been the people in this organization, and our values. We went through a rebranding in 2016 from Ohio Presbyterian Retirement Services to Ohio Living, but we kept ‘faith’ in our tagline, which is ‘faith, compassion, community.’ With our faith-infused values, we’re able to do the right thing, and we’re supported by a terrific board of volunteers who come from areas throughout Ohio. They set the vision for the organization, and they support the needs of 2,700 team members who are providing care to about 75,000 Ohioans a year in all of our markets.

Q: Speaking of volunteering, you’re on the board of the national LeadingAge organization and involved in some other organizations as well. And you mentioned people who volunteer for Ohio Living. What do you believe are the important benefits of being involved in organizations in this way?

A: That’s a great question. I think the benefits are … having the privileged ability to set vision for an association that provides care and support to those who need it the most. So therefore, from the LeadingAge national perspective, I’m working with [President and CEO] Katie [Smith Sloan] and my board colleagues to set the vision of LeadingAge, which supports about 5,400 providers from coast to coast.

What do I believe the return is for board members at Ohio Living? They have the ability to influence change, and we’ve continued to be innovators. We’re a very innovative organization, and I thank the board for that, too, because what else can we do to continue to serve more older adults throughout Ohio? And they set the vision. They assist us in some creative, innovative initiatives like the Perennial Consortium, creating our own Medicare Advantage plan, provider-owned, where we can exercise our judgment on coordinating the care for those who we serve. And I’d rather have our clinicians at bedside make the healthcare decisions for our residents as opposed to a third party, with all due respect.

Q: How long have you been with Ohio Living?

A: My 10-year anniversary was Dec. 28.

Q: During that time, what have been the biggest changes?

A: If I were to leave the organization tomorrow, which I don’t have any plans to do, one of my proudest accomplishments is the alignment of the organization. If I go back 10 years prior, it’s not that we were moving in different directions. It’s just that our operating divisions weren’t moving in the same direction. We’re very aligned through all of our operating divisions now, and there’s kind of like a golden thread that flows, whether you’re a team member of ours who is providing end-of-life care to about 400 hospice patients a day or you’re a receptionist at the front desk of Ohio Living Westminster-Thurber.

Secondly, in looking back over the last 10 years, is introducing some innovative ways that we can enhance care delivery and services to older adults throughout Ohio.

In the midst of this pandemic, we started a Medicare Advantage plan. As of January 2021, we have two plans up and running, one in Colorado, and one in Ohio. Juniper Communities, Ohio Living, Christian Living Communities and AllyAlign Health are the owners. And in Ohio, we have four other providers who own the plan. We have about 500 enrollees, and as occupancy continues to improve, so will our enrollment. It’s a nice way to enhance our care delivery and prevent money leaving our respective missions, regardless of tax status.

We’re also doing primary care. We created our own pharmacy. You have to continue to innovate and continue to grow, especially as we’re coming out of this pandemic.

Q: Are there other areas into which Ohio Living plans to grow at this point?

A: We’re in 51 or 52 of the 88 counties in Ohio. We’re going continue to fi ll out some market density in terms of our existing markets. We’ll grow peripherally in other markets, and I would envision we’ll be moving beyond Ohio in the contiguous states. [We have] no desire strategically to go to California and New York, but the contiguous states would make sense for us.

There’s also an opportunity for us — and when I say ‘us,’ I’m talking about the industry — to proactively introduce value propositions to someone who is living in the general community. Maybe they will move into one of our campus communities one day, and maybe they won’t. But what could we do to help them optimize their aging experience? We’re continuing to move in that direction. We don’t have it figured out yet, but we will.

Q: What do you believe are the keys to being a great place to work in senior living?

A: Communication, communication, communication. Lifting up our team members, letting them know that they’re making a difference, letting them know we care about them, letting them know that they’re important to the well-being of this mission.

Something I started doing about 18 months ago is, when a team member has a milestone employment anniversary — 5, 10, 15, 20 [years] and so forth — I’ll give them a call at home. I will either leave a message or, if I speak to them personally, I’ll say, ‘I know today you celebrated your anniversary at Ohio Living, and I’m just calling to say thank you for affording us 10 years of your life, and thank you for doing what you do and, more selfishly, thank you for doing it with us.’ It sends a message that I care, and I do care. I think the more we can do that, the more we can remind our team that they are appreciated — it’s hard work — and support them whatever they do. I think that’s core critical.

Q: You referenced the pandemic. You were vocal at the beginning of the pandemic about a disparity in personal protective equipment among healthcare settings, particularly long-term care versus hospitals. How do you think the government’s response to the needs of long-term care has been since that time?

A: I think they’ve improved. We care for a very challenged individual at a point in their lives when they’re very, very fragile. And that’s been very challenging. And if you look at the COVID-induced expirations of this country, you look at the age cohort, the most significant population has been north of 80 years old. And in my opinion, we’ve been treated unfairly in the media. As most recently as President Biden’s State of the Union speech, about a segment of the nursing home industry where they want operations to improve, but yet it’s casting a net on the entire industry, which I take issue with. If you go backwards, to answer your question, about 23 months ago, we weren’t thought of, to me, as well as we should have been in terms of PPE distribution. The government, in my opinion, has improved, but I think there’s still a long way to go.

Q: Are there any additional thoughts you’d like to share about the history of the organization and the reasons behind its success?

A: I’m just going to go back to that great question you asked before: what’s a key driver? It’s our people. It’s our leadership. It’s from the boardroom to my predecessors serving as former CEOs of this organization to members of our team who have served and who have left us and retired. We pride ourselves on some longevity here in terms of talent. And, again, you’re just doing the right thing. We’re embarking on our next 100 years building on the foundation that others have built for us. And I’m just incredibly privileged and humbled to be supporting a team of 2,700 here as we provide great care and services to older adults throughout Ohio.

Editor’s Note: An abbreviated version of this discussion appeared as an “A Few Minutes With…” department titled “100 years old and still growing” in the April print issue.

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Because staff members were so focused on a vertical approach toward fighting the pandemic, epidemiologists are reporting increases in infections such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Candida auris, observed Medline Medical Science Liaison Caryn Arnold.

“Just because you aren’t looking for all those multidrug-resistant organisms we were trying to focus on prior to COVID-19 does not mean they are not there,” added Deb Burdsall, Ph.D., of Baldwin Hills Solutions LLC.

Even maladies like chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are on the rise because events  such as routine testing and elective surgeries were either postponed or unavailable, said Mary Madison, top clinical consultant for long-term care/senior living at Briggs Healthcare. The pandemic has hindered medication management efforts to contain similarly dangerous infections.

“In some ways, the fight against COVID-19 has diverted our attention from some very key priorities,” said Chad Worz, PharmD, CEO of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists. “From an infection control perspective, things like sliding scale insulin, the use of medications that must be administered three and four times a day, and polypharmacy in general become targets to reduce the potential transmission of the virus between staff and residents.”

Meanwhile, COVID-related medication management and attendant vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and oral antivirals will continue to be prominent concerns in 2022, said Cristina Crawford, spokeswoman for the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living.

Going forward, access to COVID treatments across all settings will be critical, noted Alan Rosenbloom, president and CEO of the Senior Care Pharmacy Coalition.

Worz said he believes that a priority coming out of the pandemic should include a renewed effort “to ensure we are balancing the non-pharmaceutical interventions with any needed medications.”

AstraZeneca’s Evusheld consists of tixagevimab and cilgavimab administered together via injection. The cocktail has been granted emergency use authorization for use before exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The goal is to protect people who are unlikely to mount an adequate immune response to COVID-19 vaccination, FDA said. 

Recipients should not be infected with the virus or have been recently exposed to an infected individual, FDA noted.

To qualify, they must also have either moderate to severely compromised immune systems or a history of severe adverse reactions to a COVID-19 vaccine and/or vaccine components.

There’s some good news for regular consumers of beans, whole grains, brown rice, berries, bran cereal and other foods that are high in fiber. Such choices may help their brains function better in old age.

In a new study appearing in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience, researchers in Japan showed that a high-fiber diet can help reduce the risk of developing dementia.

“Dementia is a devastating disease that usually requires long-term care,” said the lead author of the study, Kazumasa Yamagishi, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Tsukuba.

For the investigation, participants completed surveys that assessed their dietary intake between 1985 and 1999. They generally were healthy and aged between 40 and 64 years. They were then followed up from 1999 until 2020, and it was noted whether they developed dementia that required care. 

Investigators found that the groups who ate lower levels of fiber had a higher dementia risk. Researchers also discovered that the link between fiber intake and dementia was more pronounced for soluble fibers. 

The team had some ideas as to what might underlie the link between dietary fiber and the risk of dementia.

“One possibility is that soluble fiber regulates the composition of gut bacteria. This composition may affect neuroinflammation, which plays a role in the onset of dementia,” Yamagishi said. “It’s also possible that dietary fiber may reduce other risk factors for dementia, such as body weight, blood pressure, lipids, and glucose levels.”

More work needs to be done before definitive conclusions can be made, according to the researchers.

“The work is still at an early stage, and it’s important to confirm the association in other populations,” Yamagishi  added. The findings may be particularly relevant for the United States, however. Here, many people consume less-than-recommended levels of high-fiber food.

Additional benefits of a high-fiber diet may include normalized bowel movements, reduced cholesterol levels and living longer. 

The dining team at Wesley Enhanced Living Main Line in Media, PA, has been struggling to find workers. The continuing care retirement community decided to purchase two robots help fill the gaps and says that they have allowed the dining team to continue to provide quality service to residents amid the current challenges. The robots are called “Matradee” by Richtech Robotics, and they give residents easier access to food delivery.

Clearwater at Riverpark named Showcase Community

Clearwater at Riverpark, a luxury independent living community in Oxnard, CA, announced that it was named a Showcase Community by Sodexo, the global food service management company. Clearwater at Riverpark received the designation from among 600 senior living communities where Sodexo has partnered to provide dining services. It was one of only two communities in California to receive the top honor. “Our Riverpark team strives to go above and beyond to deliver on Clearwater’s philosophy of Empowered Living through impactful emotional, physical and social experiences in a stimulating and comfortable environment,” said Danielle Morgan, Clearwater Living’s president and chief operating officer. “We are honored to have been recognized by Sodexo for our joint commitment to provide delightful culinary experiences that feed both body and soul.”

Food choices affect life expectancy, study finds

Adults willing to ditch the typical Western diet may gain a decade or more in life expectancy, according to a study published online Feb. 8 in PLOS Medicine. The researchers found that a sustained change from a typical Western diet to the optimal diet from age 20 years is estimated to increase life expectancy by more than a decade. A change to the optimized diet at age 60 years from a typical diet is estimated to increase life expectancy by 8 years for women and 8.8 years for men, whereas 80-year-olds could gain about 3.4 years. Adoption of a feasibility diet (a midpoint between an optimal and a typical Western diet) from a typical diet is estimated to increase life expectancy by 6.2 years for 20-year-old U.S. women and 7.3 years for U.S. men. The largest gains would result from eating more legumes, whole grains, and nuts and less red meat and processed meat.