A trip down advocacy lane. Whew. I just came back from downtown Washington DC, where I was within a short walk of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the organization that sponsors the certification for aging in place -- CAPS.
As you know, today, in partnership with the City of New York and Selfhelp Community Services Inc., Microsoft will hold a press conference in to unveil a new Virtual Senior Center program, which demonstrates how technology can enhance the lives of homebound seniors and help revitalize senior centers.
Everybody's doing it - reproving benefits of telehealth. When you put these together, you have to ask why. What is the reason that large organizations don't cite previous studies rather than spend money to prove the same point? We're not talking about drug trials here, we are talking about telehealth monitoring, a technology that has been around for a decade at least, that has been studied and deployed, but not uniformly reimbursed (which is the real problem here).
The dog days of February -- effort beyond task. I was in a assisted living/nursing home last week and saw the same golden retriever dog (whose master is the ever-cheerful maintenance guy) and down another hall, a snoozing cat. Here's something I've not seen surveyed -- what percentage of senior housing organizations permit and even encourage pets on the premises and in the presence of seniors? If you know the answer to this question, please contact me!