Do Your Research When Choosing Nursing Homes In Texas
With over 1100 nursing homes in Texas, surely there are plenty of good choices to consider before placing a loved one in long term senior care.
A study done in 2002 disclosed the fact that only 14% of nursing homes in Texas actually met minimum federal standards for quality care. The same study showed that 94% of Texas nursing homes didn’t meet minimum staffing level requirements.
Those are unbelievable statistics, but perhaps the most shocking revelation found in that congressional study was the following:
47% of the nursing homes in Texas were found to have violations deemed to have the potential to cause more than minimal harm to residents.
This last fact means that at the time, nearly 40,000 nursing home residents in Texas were thought to be at risk for significant harm caused by lack of proper care on the part of senior care staff and management.
Even if the long term care industry in the state of Texas has come a long way since then, it’s crucial to ensure that your loved one avoids finding himself on the wrong side of an unfortunate accident.
The truth is quite simple. Your assisted living choices in Texas would be limited to less than one hundred facilities if staffing levels haven’t been corrected in broad fashion.
100 facilities? If there were truly only 100 properly staffed facilities in this state, it would be a very tall order to accommodate a population consisting of over 2.4 million people aged 65 years or older.Believe it or not, this is only 1 assisted living facility for every 24,000 seniors!
The good news is that awareness since 2002 has definitely led to a lot of great improvements to each and every Texas assisted living facility. As with any industry in any other state, the Texas assisted living community continues to make strides and there is plenty of room for further improvement. In reality there are plenty of choices for placing your loved one.
And since not everybody over 65 will require long term care in their lifetimes, the ratio of nursing homes to the people who need them in Texas is on par with like statistics in other states.
Still a little daunted by the prospect of finding the right senior living dallas Texas facility? You should be. The decision to hand over your loved one for long term nursing home care should never be taken lightly, no matter where you live.
With some diligent research and the use of abundant resources available in today’s information age, you can narrow down the search and provide good, restful nights for yourself and your loved one.
0 comments August 05 2009 6:19 am | admin | General