Life has been worsening for older adults – in senior living and at home. Every day there is some new article about the impact of Covid-19 on older adults -- or another study turns up that you missed. Residents in senior living communities are having a tough time, cut off from activities and visits from family. Isolation has produced an increase in mental health issues, loneliness and depression – and that would be for those who have a good grasp of what is going on – for those in long-term care, for those with dementia, unable to be hugged by family, it is far worse. What’s been going on with older adults in the context of social isolation and loneliness?
DENVER, Sept. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Senior living community leaders believe engagement technology is more important now than they did last year, according to a new research report released today by iN2L, the leading provider of person-centered digital engagement to the senior living market. The report, Senior Living 2020: The State of Engagement and Technology, examines how community leaders view and value senior engagement technology now versus before the COVID-19 pandemic.
During Covid-19, do older adults take their prescribed meds? Not necessarily. Medication non-adherence has long been a topic of concern, with the cost of poor adherence amounting to $177 billion each year, 50% of treatment failures, and as many as 25,000 deaths. And according to the Pharmacy Times, Covid-19 has made a problematic situation much worse. Some pharmacy experts express concern about the pandemic’s side effects of isolation, job loss/loss income, medication costs, missed or unavailable doctor’s appointments, or issues with package delivery. And the CDC has expressed concern about risks and modified procedures for older adults and pick-up of prescriptions in pharmacies.
June -- it was the worst of times. Who can comprehend that 43% of Covid-19 deaths are linked to nursing homes? Who could have imagined the economic impact of job loss and (almost all) business shutdown? Who could have speculated that senior living organizations would have occupancy levels nationwide below 88%? Who would have thought that telehealth definitions would include phone calls and Facetime? Most importantly, as so many families were reminded, their aging relatives had not adopted any of the devices and software that would enable face-to-face communication. Or that high speed internet would not be available in nursing homes or the dementia care units in assisted living where their relatives now lived. Let’s hope July is better! Here are the five blog posts from June 2020:
Reading about big tech controversies can make you sigh. Rant on. You may remember when the browser arrived. Maybe you knew about Mosaic in 1993 or Netscape Navigator in 1994. But you probably did not try them unless you were a geek -- because there wasn’t much to look at then on the so-called World-wide-Web. Apple’s Safari did not appear until 2003 and Google Chrome in 2008 – eventually these dominated the browser market, though three cheers for the existence of privacy-oriented browser Brave (2016) and search tool DuckDuckGo (2008). No doubt both will disappear into acquisitions. As for social media, things really got going with AOL Instant Messenger in 1993 -- then all was pretty quiet until 2003-4, when LinkedIn, MySpace, Skype, and Facebook all arrived.