When a resident needs more care than an assisted living facility can provide, the staff needs to take measures to ensure that that individual is placed in a nursing home or hospital that can provide the level of care necessary. They need to contact the individual’s family and doctor to help with the decision of where to move the elderly resident. Although deciding to relocate someone from an assisted living facility can be difficult, administrators and staff members need to be able to work with families and doctors to find facilities that fit with the residents’ special needs and the families’ budgets.
When staff members at assisted living facilities talk to family doctors about the care of elderly individuals, they need to ask and answer questions about the individuals’ conditions. Providing and getting insight into the type of physical and emotional challenges and disorders affecting residents can help administrators and staff members at an assisted living facility to be able to make recommendations on what type of hospitals or nursing homes residents need to be moved to for a short or long-term period of time. They should work closely with the doctors from the start and inform them as soon as decisions have been made so that the physicians can make arrangements for further care for the residents. When dealing with doctors, the individuals making the decisions need to treat doctors in a respectful manner and involve them in the decision-making process, especially when medical care is involved.
Notifying families can be an even more daunting task for staff members at an assisted living facility. When they start to get a sense that elderly residents need more care than they can provide, they need to inform family members of what they are seeing and involve them in the decision-making process from the beginning. Regular communication with elderly individuals’ children can help administrators and staff members to avoid conflicts when a decision has been reached to move their family members to other care facilities. They should talk to family members about the logistics, such as the costs and level of medical care necessary, so that family members can provide feedback and be a part of the ultimate decision. Administrators want to make sure that they make the right decisions because elderly residents’ health and lives depend upon whether they receive a certain level of care.
