Mediate Michigan

When your elderly relative needs to enter some sort of long-term care facility — a moment few parents or children approach without dread — what you’d like to have is clarity.

Does assisted living really mark a great improvement over a nursing home, or has the industry simply hired better interior designers? Are nursing homes as bad as people fear, or is that an outmoded stereotype? Can doing one’s homework really steer families to the best places? It’s genuinely hard to know.

I’m about to muddy the waters further by suggesting that what variety of facility an older person lives in may matter less than we’ve assumed. And that the characteristics adult children look for when they begin the search aren’t necessarily what makes a difference to the people who move in.

via Finding the Right Home — and Contentment, Too – The New Old Age Blog – NYTimes.com.