Senior Living Today

Support the news July 03, 2020 Miriam Wasser Kimberly Atkins U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks with U.S. Sen. Ed Markey. (Winslow Townson/AP) Nursing homes have been in the spotlight during the pandemic, but assisted living facilities, whose residents are also older and likely to have underlying health issues, have received far less attention from the federal government. For that reason, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, launched an investigation in late April into COVID-19 outbreaks at these facilities. The lawmakers surveyed the top 11 assisted living operators in the country — which collectively house over 153,000 older adults, or about a sixth of the nation’s assisted living population — and found, in the words of Markey, that “we are simply not doing enough to protect our seniors or workers in assisted living homes from this deadly virus.”…
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A mother living in an assisted living facility taken out by son. PHOENIX — As more than 200 assisted living facilities in Arizona have reported coronavirus cases, families question where their parents and grandparents will be safest during the pandemic. At the Springs of Scottsdale, which offers both independent and assisted living, management said 14 residents contracted the virus. Five of those residents died. Paul Fennell’s mom, Margaret, just turned 100 and lived at the facility. She tested positive in May. “I assumed she was going to be dead in two weeks,” Paul said. “To me, it’s unbelievable. We know about hotspots, but people generally don’t know about this.”…
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A new survey of assisted living facilities found that close to 7,000 seniors residing in these types of communities may have died from the novel coronavirus. Because deaths in assisted living are not counted in federal records of nursing home deaths, the actual number is unknown. The survey, conducted as part of an investigation led by Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, as well as Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., asked the nation’s 11 largest assisted living facility operators about their experiences dealing with COVID-19, and discovered that 31% of seniors who contracted the in an assisted living facility died from it.…
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