Wall Street Journal Article Skips Past Opportunity

There is something missing from the conversation. It is not the monitors. It is not the home modifications remodeling. It is not the home health, meals delivery or adult day care.  This Wall Street Journal article glides past the paragraph that hints at the opportunity. It is the management hub for Aging in Place 2.0. We need to be monitoring the monitors (and everything else). And managing it all too.

“Of course, coming up with your own plan for care requires a lot more work than simply writing a check to an institution. Finding paid help you can trust takes time, legwork and background checks—and there are no guarantees. The total costs can be hard to pinpoint in advance. It is tough to pull it all off without the vigilance of a good advocate, typically an adult child.”

Those of us with real life experience and those of us in the field know this is not a simple, concise or close ended job. But it is a good role for technology assisted human organization. I am quite sure the manager role will end up a new profession, with training programs emerging that combine the talents of state of the art project management with empathic and passionate care management and just in time inventory control. We train executive managers for healthcare and senior/assisted living at programs like this one at George Mason University.

We need that for Aging in Place as well. The Aging in Place manager role is the visible face of a complex system of data analysis, vendor management and client direction. Recognizing and training these critical folks will spell the success of Aging in Place for product and service providers, efficient use of our medical and human resources and, hopefully, respectful and dignified housing, care and services for our growing population of older citizens. It will be much better for loving families, too.