Happy Monday! The weather is heating up as we approach the first day of summer, and this week’s Monday roundup looks at an issue heating up in the world of senior living: the increasing rate of seniors getting evicted from nursing homes.
We’ll also take a look at how one smartphone company is reviving an old ad campaign to appeal to Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers and Millennials.
Most Shared: Multiple States Fed Up With Nursing Home Evictions
Multiple states are taking legal action in response to an apparent increase in nursing home evictions. According to npr.org, the federal government documented more than 9,000 complaints in 2015 about unfair nursing home evictions.
In the nursing home world this is called “involuntary discharge,” and states like Maryland and Illinois are figuring out ways to hold nursing homes accountable. In Maryland, more than half of all involuntary discharges have come from just one small chain of nursing homes, but in Illinois the problem seems to go beyond a single nursing home chain; evictions in the state have more than doubled in the last five years for which data are available.
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh discovered that some nursing homes are discharging seniors and sending them to homeless shelters or to unlicensed board-and-care facilities, which violates discharge planning processes that are supposed to make sure a resident has a safe place to go.
According to one complaint, a woman suffering from severe dementia was dropped off in her son’s driveway while he was not home. The son found his mom wandering around for several hours when he returned home from work.
Frosh explains that eviction decisions can be financially motivated. Nursing homes receive more money from Medicare, which only pays for the first 100 days of long-term care and can only be used for skilled nursing.
Once the 100 days of Medicare pay runs out, seniors are transitioned to Medicaid, which is less profitable for the institutions caring for them, making them less desirable clients.
As senior living marketers, we understand the complex and difficult decisions that senior living organizations face in balancing meeting the needs of Medicaid-paid clients versus private-pay clients. Our goal is to apply our expertise to effectively leverage their assets to provide seniors with the best-possible care, whatever their situation.
To read the full article, click here.
Most Clicked: Remember ‘Hello Moto’…Boomers & Gen-Xers do!
Smartphone maker Lenovo is introducing its “Moto” brand smartphone and bringing back their popular tagline “Hello Moto” to appeal to Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers (who will likely be familiar with the campaign) as well as a new audience of Millennials. Forbes.com revealed that last year Lenovo–whose previous share of the U.S. smartphone market was zero–completed its $2.91 billion acquisition of Motorola’s handset business called Motorola Mobility. Motorola has an 85 year history in the U.S. market.
Lenovo CMO David Roman explains that though Motorola had some legacy issues, it still retains many brand strengths. Their research shows that people still remember the popular Hello Moto campaign, which was perceived as cool and visually striking. Roman believes that Millennials will gravitate to it for the same reasons Boomers and Gen-Xers did when the campaign first ran.
It makes sense for Lenovo to take this approach and revive a successful campaign; as it strives to carve out a niche as “the future of mobile” with younger users, it can capitalize on brand awareness from the older folks, who are on their phones more than ever.
To read the full article, click here.
It is worth noting that Creating Results’ 2016 Social, Silver Surfers research found that more than half of those in the over-40 age group surveyed are using mobile devices to access the internet some or all of the time.
Source: Creating Results, Social Silver Surfers 2016