Everything You Need to Know About Needs Assessment for Senior Housing
As a family member grows older, the need for senior housing becomes inevitable at some point. It is to not only make it easier for the family members who already bear the burden of caring for them. But also to make sure that they get the best quality of care from professionals who specialize in elderly care. But before they can move into this type of living community, a needs assessment should be done by the staff first to know the elderly’s physical, cognitive, and even emotional health.
Most senior housing facilities use an evaluation packet or checklist that will allow healthcare staff to determine the level of care needed by a senior who will be under their care.
Some facilities use a “point system” to rank seniors while others just go through a comprehensive list of questions and base their decisions from the answers.
But in general, healthcare staff will gauge the following areas to make sure that an elderly person gets the care that they need while in senior housing:
Level of orientation
In this stage, the senior is gauged according to his level of orientation that will determine if he is at risk for wandering, forgetting things, and getting injured due to memory loss and other cognitive problems that may be related to his current health condition.
The staff specifically assesses for awareness to people, places and time, forgetfulness and occasional confusion, general disorientation and poor judgment, unsafe behaviors, and cognitive deficits.
Fall risk
A lot of seniors are victims of accidental falls that may leave them debilitated or worse, dead. This is why it’s very important to determine an elderly’s risk for falls by assessing if he has experienced a fall at home and if he had more than one accident in the last three months.
Bathroom independence
The bathroom can be one of the biggest challenges for seniors, especially those who have physical limitations that make it more dangerous for them to take a bath or empty their bowel and bladder alone.
In a senior housing community, seniors are given the assistance that they require when using the bathroom. It is the reason why they are assessed for their level of independence when it comes to emptying their bowel and bladder.
Or if they require prompting to go to the bathroom, or if they have problems with incontinence, if they need to use assistive devices and protective garments or if they need constant assistance when going to the bathroom are some of the factors to be considered.
The takeaway
Every senior housing community has the ultimate goal of offering the best possible care to seniors depending on their needs assessment.
This is why a needs assessment is the first step towards moving to senior housing and probably the most important part because it allows healthcare staff to really assess their future residents and set proper expectations for family members.
Doing so will make them enjoy an excellent quality of life by offering them services that fit their exact needs and their current health conditions.
Fallbrook Assisted Living is proud to offer its services to Fremont, NE, and surrounding areas and cities: Arlington, Cedar Bluffs, Ames Nickerson, Fontanelle, Arlington, Leshara, Colon, and Hooper
