The media continues to throw all seniors housing into the nursing home basket. It has to stop now, especially in this time of COVID.
Here I go again, or better yet, here goes the uninformed New York Times again. In a story last week called, “Voices From Inside Nursing Homes,” I didn’t know whether these would be the voices of workers, or the residents who felt isolated with little social interaction. It was mostly neither.
It was voices from children of residents, and in two cases, the resident; one “voice” was that of a staffer. The problem was that most were not voices from nursing homes. They were from a residential care facility, a seniors housing complex, an assisted living community, and yes, a nursing home or two.
Assisted living is very different in design, scope of services and frailty of their residents from your standard nursing home. Yet the media continues to throw them all in the same basket. This is a great disservice to the public, which needs to understand the differences. After all, assisted living as a name has been around for a little more than 30 years now. Come on, we are in the third decade of the 21st century
Does it take that long for the media to get it, or, is the media just lazy, or does it have an agenda, like the New York Times? Hmm, I think all of the above.
