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For many marketers in all industries, a strong Facebook presence is a critical component of not just a social media strategy, but a marketing strategy as a whole. 

However, in the early days of Facebook, senior citizens (65+ for the purposes of this post) lagged behind dramatically in usage compared to other age groups, according to Martino and Binzer and Bluespire Marketing.

However, that line of thinking has a very short shelf life according to recent findings by Pew Research Center. Seniors aged 65+ saw an 11% increase in users, from 45% of online adults in 2013 to 56% in 2014. 

While adoption in other social media applications such as Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are still low, all saw an increase in adoption of at least 5% from 2013 to 2014, with Pinterest seeing the largest jump.

This is encouraging, but daunting, data for senior living communities who have avoided having a strong social media presence. 

On one hand, this data confirms that an investment in social media would be worthwhile. On the other, it is another component to maintain for communities who are already strapped for resources.

Most importantly, despite the increase in Facebook users, there is far more senior living communities that need to know about the social media platform and promoting communities featuring the use of Facebook.

As senior housing communities know, the Fair Housing Act (FHA) still applies to senior living communities.

While these communities have an exception in not having to rent to people with children, they still need to abide by the diversity provisions for people -- or human models as outlined in the FHA -- used in advertising. 

Not adhering to these laws can result in lawsuits and charges of discrimination. You can get a great overview of the specifics of the FHA on the Fair Housing Blog.

Before your residents can appear in any advertising, each identifiable person that will be shown must sign a model release. 

This goes for pictures taken at events hosted by your community. If your community does not have a model release form, many templates can be found online or our senior living experts can help your community put one together.

Secondly, as outlined by Nadeen Green at Fair Housing Blog, “Be sure that the folks who are your models are representative of the population in your metro-area. Not at the community itself, not in the neighborhood or section of town, but your metro-area.” 

To make sure you comply with these diversity requirements, make sure you contact your legal counsel.

Finally, it is important to note that all of these requirements apply to social media, as it is currently considered a form of advertising. 

While prospects are joining the ranks of Facebook quickly, communities must ensure they comply with all laws and requirements before making social media a part of your marketing plan. You can learn more from the questions posed in this Fair Housing Blog recording.

This article was written by Fran Palma, and is used here with permission.

Good Shepherd Community Care, a LeadingAge Massachusetts member, went "solar" in January 2015 with a ribbon cutting ceremony and luncheon celebrating the new 28kW solar energy system installation by Invaleon Technologies at its Newton, MA, office location.

This initiative is notable not only because it will give Good Shepherd Community Care access to clean solar energy, but also because the system was donated by the daughter of a woman who passed away under the care of Good Shepherd Community Hospice in 2014.

In the daughter’s words, "Good Shepherd had such a positive impact on my mother's quality of life literally up to the day she died. I wanted to give something back to them to demonstrate how grateful I am to this nonprofit organization and its hardworking staff."

Money that Good Shepherd saves on electrical costs will be put toward the care of patients and families who are in need of hospice and palliative care.

For more information, contact Jennifer Sax, director of communications, jsax@gscommunitycare.org.

A big part of workplace benefits is the continued evolution of employer wellness programs.

A white paper offered by Advanced Voluntary Concepts describes 5 wellness trends:

  • More latitude with incentives, including penalties and rewards.
  • A move from participation- to outcomes-based measurements.
  • Behavior change that’s motivated by technology.
  • An increase in disruptive innovation.
  • Human interaction that can’t be substituted with technology.

The paper includes examples of how other organizations and companies have accomplished success with their wellness programs.

It’s always exciting to see when a major publication does a positive story about senior living. It might be an article about upscale retirement communities, maybe the latest trends in fine dining, or possibly the increased usage of technology, according to Randy Eilts, Public Relations Associate at GlynnDevins.

So why do some communities get included in these stories and others don’t? You could say it has something to do with good old-fashioned hard work and networking. 

And part of it also falls into the old adage that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Editors and reporters who work on these types of stories generally don’t know about your community. 

However, a dedicated public relations/communications plan certainly helps.

Here are 5 things to consider:

 

  1. Make it a point to reach out to local and national reporters at least once a month.

  2. Provide story ideas that a national audience would be interested in.

  3. Subscribe to services that provide reporter inquiries (helps in knowing what they’re working on).

  4. Look for national trends and an angle on how your community fits into these trends.

  5. Don’t give up; it often takes time to truly get noticed.

 

The steady outreach about a community, its services and amenities, the unique and interesting residents, all play into the formula that helps put your community on the radar screen.

Placement of a good story about your community helps generate awareness and create a bit of buzz. Residents like to share those types of stories with friends and family. Leadership feels good about being showcased in a positive manner.

When thinking about your public relations plan, how dedicated are you to getting your stories out there? Do you have a plan in place that puts you on the radar screen on a consistent basis? 

Wouldn’t it be nice if your community was highlighted not only locally, but on the national level too? It can happen. 

The key is being on the radar.

 

Financing for Licensed Healthcare Facilities under the HUD 232 Program is accessible as ever. 

The once dreaded queue -- the line of submitted applications for mortgage insurance pending review from HUD -- has been all but eliminated with only a handful of transactions waiting for assignment. 

This means that based volume in November 2014, an application submitted to HUD for review would be assigned to a HUD underwriter in approximately less than a month. 

With interest rates near historical lows, now is a great time to obtain HUD mortgage insurance, according to a report from Ziegler.

Sims Mortgage Funding, Inc. (SMF) closed in September a $1,800,000 HUD-insured Section 223(f) loan for the AuSable Valley Apartments, a Section 202 elderly project located in Fairview, MI.  

AuSable is owned and managed by Wellspring Lutheran Services, a not-for-profit organization that operates approximately 19 communities in Michigan serving over 2,600 residents.  

Wellspring provides affordable housing, home care, hospice and grief support, independent and assisted living, memory care, short-term rehabilitation, and skilled nursing care.

AuSable was constructed in 1981 and consists of 60 one-bedroom apartments in a single-story structure containing approximately 47,500 square feet.  

It is part of a 90-acre senior housing campus that includes attached condominiums, independent living residences, and skilled nursing care.  

The sponsor had three basic goals in pursuing the recapitalization:  

 

  1. Ensuring that affordable housing units would continue to be available on a long-term basis.

  2. Financing a series of moderate improvements to the property that would improve accessibility, enhance resident comfort and increase occupancy.

  3. Generating a developer fee that would provide additional organizational resources that could be applied system-wide.

 

These goals were met through the Section 223(f) loan, which was underwritten at 90% of the property's fair market value and features a 35 year, fully amortizing term.  

Wellspring now will be able to meet one of their core corporate goals of providing affordable housing to low and moderate income elderly for years to come.   

The employer shared responsibility provisions (commonly called the employer mandate) under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are now in effect as of January 1, 2015.  

These provisions apply to those companies that employee 50 or more full-time employees.  

To make sure your organization is compliant, CliftonLarsonAllen offers several resource materials:

Football season may be nearing its final throes, but the new advocacy season is just getting under way in Washington, DC.  

January 6th was ‘opening day’ on Capitol Hill when the new 114th Congress was sworn in.  This Congress features 74 freshmen members and Republicans in control of the Senate after last November’s elections.  

LeadingAge’s advocacy team is already reaching out to new senators and representatives, beginning to meet with key committees, and working on a Congressional briefing for elected officials and their staff. 

To help kick off the new Congress, LeadingAge is asking all members and supporters to email their lawmakers and ask them to prioritize the issues that matter to seniors and to those who serve them. 

Specifically, LeadingAge is asking Congress to:

  • Avoid across-the-board Medicare cuts
  • Strengthen the low-income housing tax credit
  • Reauthorize the Older Americans Act
  • Fix the Medicare observation days problem repeal therapy caps
  • Preserve tax-exempt status for not-for-profit aging services providers 

LeadingAge’s priorities for the 114th Congress affect the entire spectrum of aging services, from senior housing and assisted living communities to skilled nursing and HCBS providers. 

LeadingAge will strongly advocate for these issues on Capitol Hill in 2015, making sure that lawmakers understand how their leadership can expand the world of possibilities for aging. 

ACTS Retirement-Life Communities Case Study
Strategic planning to streamline and improve services, a strong commitment to investing in infrastructure changes and the early adoption of monitoring and point-of-care technologies have enabled ACTS Retirement-Life Communities to lead the industry in setting the standard of care.

Billings Clinic/Dahl Memorial Healthcare Association Case Study
How a Network of Providers and Telehealth Enabled Care to Rural Patients.

Cathedral Square Corporation Case Study
How 1 housing provider earned a seat at the table to influence state health care policy.

Ecumen Case Study
Since 2003, Ecumen has expanded its reach beyond its bricks-and-mortar campuses in an effort to establish a market niche among older consumers living in their own homes. The organization’s mission to empower older people and help them remain independent led to the adoption of a variety of technology products and services.

Eskaton Case Study
Investments in technology-related research and development helped Eskaton deploy electronic health records (EHR) and a sensor-equipped remote monitoring system, and build a national demonstration home featuring universal design, supportive technologies and “green” living features.

Evangelical Homes of Michigan Case Study
This Case Study discusses how Evangelical Homes of Michigan’s life care services at home and digital technology platform allow provider to break through and provide wellness solutions beyond bricks-and-mortar.

Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society Case Study
A Culture of Innovation Committed to Evidence Base Use of Technology.

Front Porch Case Study
The Front Porch Center for Technology Innovation and Wellbeing (CTIW) is a center of excellence within the Front Porch family of companies that collaborates with residents and staff-as well as researchers, academic insti-tutions and other care providers-to identify the needs of older adults that can be met with the help of technology solutions.

Jewish Home Lifecare Case Study
This case study shows how Jewish Home Lifecare uses technology in all of its service lines and in all components of its Community Service Division. It is currently in the process of rolling out technology-enabled services in its sub-acute unit.

Lutheran Homes of Michigan Case Study
This case study discusses how Lutheran Homes of Michigan extended medication management technology pilots to empower vulnerable elders.

Lutheran Homes of South Carolina Case Study
Technology initiatives at Lutheran Homes of South Carolina are grounded in the organization’s strategic goals and priorities related to improving the quality of care and services for our residents. Current technology initiatives include electronic health records (EHR) and a variety of care tracking software designed for specific care sectors like hospice or assisted living.

Mather LifeWays
Dr. Perry Edelman and his colleagues at the Mather LifeWays Institute on Aging have been working to assess the quality of life of people with dementia and developed a measure, called Observing Quality of Life in Dementia (OQOLD), which enables professional caregivers to assess the quality of life of persons with dementia based on their observations during a variety of activities.

Metropolitan Jewish Health System Case Study
EMR has helped MJHS’s home care agencies be more efficient with aggregated data to improve internal operations while the ability to provide customized data about outcomes to partners and payers a key success factor in a future environment that will most certainly include payment bundling, capitation, health homes and Accountable Care Organizations (ACO).

MorseLife Case Study
MorseLife employs a variety of technology in its provision of services and supports, including remote monitoring technology to help mitigate acute-care episodes, care documentation software that helps nursing assistants track activities of daily living, wireless networking technology in preparation for EHR deployment and a paperless employment application process that includes background screening and competency testing.

Presbyterian Senior Care Case Study
Presbyterian SeniorCare is preparing to extend its services into the homes of older people living in the community. Preliminary plans call for integrating a variety of technology devices into the organization’s non-medical home care agency and into an adult day health program that the organization is now expanding. A shared transportation service would link these two programs with the organization’s Longwood at Home program.

Providence Life Services Case Study
Providence Life Services (PLS) does not focus on calculating a return on investment for technology and instead relies on technology-enabled services to help make the organization more efficient and specifically looks for areas to eliminate any duplicate data entry by integrating as many existing systems as possible. However, it recognizes that the existence of an EMR or other technology does not guarantee greater efficiency unless the organization uses the EMR implementation period to standardize their procedures and processes.

Selfhelp Community Services Case Study
Once Selfhelp incorporated technology into its mission statement, it began to actively recruit new board members who had technology backgrounds and established a technology committee that is led by a technology champion. Staff members who are supportive of and familiar with technology were identified and called upon to convince others to give technology a try.

Volunteers of America Case Study
This case study discusses how Volunteers of America’s remote monitoring pilot improved quality of life, increased staff efficiencies and decreased care costs.
 

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