Choosing Is the Easy Part

A Place for Mom recently released survey findings on how families approach the search for senior care. McKnight's Senior Living covered it, and the numbers are worth sitting with: 73% of family caregivers said the search was triggered gradually, not by a specific health event. Forty-one percent weren't sure what they were looking for, while more than a third found it hard to determine what level of care their parent actually needed.

The article draws a reasonable conclusion, which is that families need more education from providers earlier in the process. That's true, but there's a gap the survey doesn't quite reach.

The ambivalence that characterizes the search doesn't end when the decision is made. Families who spent months uncertain about whether to move a parent, to which community, and at what level of care — those families sign a lease and then face an entirely different set of decisions they're equally unprepared for. Who packs what; what gets sold, donated, stored, or disposed of; which vendors handle which pieces, in what order it all gets done, and what are the consequences should the timeline slip.

The survey captures the emotional and cognitive load of choosing, but it doesn't measure the load of executing.

In a high-level corporate relocation (think: multinational corporation with tens of thousands of employees around the globe), the gap between "offer accepted" and "employee at their desk in the new city" is managed. There's a project plan, a single coordinator, a sequenced vendor schedule, a defined scope. At the lower echelons, the company hands the employee a lump sum and wishes them luck, and in those cases the research is consistent: a majority of employees feel overwhelmed.

Similarly, when families of seniors are left to their own devices, the weight of the decisions can be crushing. While the A Place for Mom survey measures what families feel during the search, what they feel on move-in day would be a good topic for the next study, since families could tell you exactly how it went.