The old keep getting older. No wonder many Florida senior living facilities and businesses that serve the elderly tell me they are continuing to do steady business, even in these tough economic times. Life expectancy in the United States has reached an all-time high: 77.9 years. The increase is due mainly to falling death rates in almost all the leading causes of death.

The new statistics come from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Men now have a life expectancy of 75.3 years. For women, it’s 80.4 years. The numbers are for the year 2007, and are based on 90 percent of death certificates in the United States.

I never really thought about where these life expectancy figures come from. Now I know: the CDC analyzes figures on the death certificate that are completed by funeral directors, attending physicians, medical examiners, and coroners. They use these figures to estimate how long a baby born today will live, assuming mortality trends stay constant. U.S. life expectancy has grown nearly one and a half years in the past decade, and is now at an all-time-high. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006.

One reason for the increased life span is that there were sharp drops in mortality rates for several leading causes of death, including: influenza and pneumonia; homicide; accidents; stroke; diabetes; and hypertension. The latest numbers also reflect a decline in the two leading causes of death in the United States: heart disease and cancer. Together, heart disease and cancer accounted for just under half of all the deaths.
Other interesting tidbits from the report:

• For the first time, life expectancy for black males reached 70 years.
• Alzheimer’s disease became the sixth leading cause of death, surpassing diabetes, which now ranks seventh. The number of deaths from Alzheimer’s remained steady, but there was a 3.9 percent drop in the number of deaths by diabetes. Also, as people live longer, more develop Alzheimer’s.

So what does this trend mean for the senior services industry? How do we grow and adapt while continuing to offer high quality services to the elderly in our senior living facilities. What about implications for Social Security and Medicare? Share your thoughts below.

Many senior living facilities are run by large regional and national corporations. Those that are locally owned are usually very small, housing maybe half a dozen residents. Courtyard  Gardens in Jupiter, FL is an exception and it is this week’s Friday’s Featured Facility on the Florida Senior Living Advisor blog. Courtyard Gardens is an assisted living facility with just more than 100 residents. It opened 10 years ago and is owned by a local resident, Dr. George Peck, and his daughter.

Courtyard Gardens Marketing Director Donna Phillips started working at the facility after her mother moved in nine years ago. She told me she was raving about the care her mother was receiving to anyone who would listen, and that’s when management approached her about becoming the marketing director. “I know what people are going through because  I’ve been there,” she said. When asked what sets Courtyard Gardens apart, Phillips says it is the facility’s caring and qualified staff.

“We have 85 staff for 111 residents. And we put money into their continuing education,” she explained. “Everyone has Alzheimer’s training, even the front desk receptionist. And everyone has first aid training.” Phillips says every employees understands that the residents come first, and their safety and happiness are the top priorities.

Phillips says another reason they are always at 100% occupancy is the great food. “Our chef is from the Ritz-Carlton. Everything is made from scratch, and we always have fresh fruit and vegetables,” she said. Rates at Courtyard Gardens range  from $3135 for a studio to $4140 for a one-bedroom apartment. In addition, there are “levels of care” that can be added on if a resident needs help showering, taking medication, etc. These levels add about $400 to the monthly fee. In the Alzheimer’s unit, costs range from $3700 for a shared unit to $4500 for a single.

To learn more about Courtyard Gardens, visit the facility’s website at www.courtyardgardens.com.

For this week’s Friday’s Featured Facility- a community that may represent a trend in senior living. Oak Hammock at the University of Florida in Gainesville is the only university-based retirement community in Florida and one of only a handful across the country. But these types of senior living facilities are attracting attention and popularity among boomers who appreciate the vibrant educational, cultural and social offerings that a university setting can offer.

Oak Hammock’s 136-acre facility is a continuing care retirement community (CCRC), meaning it offers a range of options – everything from independent living to assisted living to memory care and skilled nursing. For a one-time entrance fee, ranging from  $147,500-over $500,000 – Oak Hammock residents are guaranteed long-term care at a significantly reduced rate. There are also monthly fees ranging from $1800-5000 to cover everything from utilities to social activities and some meals.
What makes Oak Hammock unique is its integration with the University of Florida. Star Bradbury, Director of Life Planning at Oak Hammock, told me that the community would not exist without the University. Oak Hammock’s board is appointment by UF’s president, and the school’s deans and staff provide input for the community’s activities. Among the benefits listed on Oak Hammock’s website are:

• Because our 22,000-sq.-ft. Fitness Center is affiliated with UF’s College of Health and Human Performance, attention has been paid to the smallest detail – from installing the right equipment to calibrating the ideal temperature for the swimming pools. 
• The College of Dentistry staffs an on-site, full-service dental hygienist suite.
• The College of Veterinary Medicine operates a Veterinary Clinic at Oak Hammock, providing routine wellness care. Pet sitting is also offered.
• The College of Fine Arts provides performance venues and schedules on-site recitals.
• The College of Medicine provides a Mini-Medical School series.
• The College of Pharmacy provides weekly consulting services with members
• Liberal Arts and Sciences presents educational programs in a wide range of disciplines.
• Oak Hammock members serve as mentors, lecturers and volunteers in the University’s many academic programs. 
• Because Oak Hammock is directly affiliated with the University of Florida, members have campus privileges similar to those of University faculty – with access to sports, performing arts events, library and research facilities, and more.

Oak Hammock is home to approximately 400 people. Most live in independent living apartments or freestanding homes. The facility also has a capacity for 42 people in its assisted living unit, 42 in skilled nursing and 24 in memory care. Oak Hammock currently has a waiting list, but if you are interested, you can secure a spot on that list for a fully-refundable $1500 deposit.

To learn more about Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, visit www.oakhammock.org.

I’m starting a new segment on the Florida Senior Living Advisor blog today called “Friday’s Featured Facility.” Every Friday I’ll tell you about one of the more than 3700 senior living facilities in Florida, everything from assisted living facilities, to nursing homes, continuing care retirement communities, hospice, skilled nursing units and adult day care centers. If you’d like to recommend a facility for me to feature, send it to me at mitra@flseniorlivingadvisor.com.

The inaugural “Friday’s Featured Facility” is Guardian Home Health in Spring Hill, Florida, about 60 miles north of Tampa. This is actually an assisted living facility, but the name “home health” refers to the fact that it is located in a single-family home. The facility is licensed to care for six residents. Of the nearly 3,000 assisted living facilities in Florida, about half have a capacity of less than 10.

Owner Elaine DeCiutiis runs Guardian Home Health, along with her husband Frank and daughter, Paulamarie Aurigemma. DeCiutiis and Aurigemma are both certified nursing assistants and have backgrounds in health care administration. They opened the home last October, with the goal of providing very personalized care to each elderly resident.

“When I’ve gone to big nursing homes, I see people just sitting there and doing nothing,” says DeCiutiis. “We try to keep them active. We play cards.  We discuss current events. We go to the movies or out to lunch.”

DeCiutiis also tailors each meal to the residents’ taste as much as possible.

“You could say we spoil them,” she says with a laugh. “But at their age, they deserve to be spoiled.” Residents are also offered a shower every day, a service that is often not possible in larger facilities where there may not be enough staff to accommodate residents in this way.

For more information on Guardian Home Health, you can visit their website at www.guardianhomehealth.org. You can also call 352-688-8832 or send an email to edecuitiis@tampabay.rr.com.    

Our regular Sunday night dinners with my elderly father and his friend Ginny always include a drink with our meal. Usually it is red wine, although sometimes, particularly if we go out to eat, they opt for a vodka martini (with an olive AND a twist please). At ages 84 and 90, respectively, I figure they can do what they want. And after all, we provide the ride to and from their Florida continuing care retirement community, so no worries there.

But it never occurred to me that those drinks might actually be helping them. That’s right. According to a new study one or two alcoholic beverages a day may reduce a senior citizen’s risk of developing dementia by almost 40 percent. The study was presented this week at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease, currently being held in Vienna, Austria.

These “moderate drinkers” who are 75 years of age or older had a lower risk of developing dementia than people who had more than two drinks a day and also a lower risk than those individuals who abstained from any alcohol completely, Dr. Kaycee Sink and her colleagues found. For the study, they asked more than 3,000 adults how often they drank and examined them every six months for up to six years for signs of memory loss or mental decline.

The findings aren’t a free pass for drinking among the elderly, the results showed. People who were already showing signs of memory problems deteriorated significantly faster if they drank alcohol, and the more they consumed the worse the symptoms became. Heavy drinkers, defined as those consuming more than 14 drinks a week, were almost twice as likely to develop dementia, researchers said.

“If you’re already drinking, you don’t need to cut back if you’re cognitively healthy, but we don’t have enough information to recommend you start drinking,” Kaycee Sink, assistant professor of medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said during a press conference. “The benefits increase as people move from mild to moderate levels of drinking, and then start to decline.”

Maybe this study will convince the folks in charge of senior living facilities to add a regular happy hour to their activity calendars!

I suppose these results also have implications for me and my fellow 40-something friends. We’ve known for a long time that a glass or two of red wine is good for our hearts. Now to think it can also stave off dementia is reason to celebrate – with a toast!