Environments for Aging - Spring 2022 - 11

letter from the editor
Spring forward
Change in senior living is afoot, just as we come
together again as a design industry
EDITORIAL
ADVISORY BOARD
Lori Alford
Avanti Senior Living
CC Andrews
Quantum Age Collaborative
David Banta
Associate Partner BKV Group
Laura Busalacchi
Brookdale Senior Living
Vassar Byrd
Rose Villa Senior Living
Margaret Calkins
Ideas Institute
Daniel J. Cinelli
Perkins Eastman
Michelle Clark
AIIM Capital
Andy Coelho
Sunrise Senior Living
Alexis Denton
Perkins Eastman
Mitch Elliott
RDG Planning & Design
Lorraine Hiatt
ImprovAging
Steve Lindsey
Garden Spot Communities
Dean Maddalena
StudioSix5
Eric McRoberts
RLPS Architects
Jane Rohde
JSR Associates Inc.
Jill Schroeder
Pope Architects
Rob Simonetti
SWBR
A
T PRESS TIME, it will be just two weeks until our staff packs up and hits
the roads/skies to make our way to Milwaukee for the 2022 EFA Conference
+ Expo. At last, we'll be back on our traditional spring schedule and
celebrating new beginnings with many of you.
And as we tiptoe out of the shadow of COVID-19, as much as feasible,
it's impossible not to reflect on where this industry has been over the
past two years. Particularly, the weight that fell on skilled nursing is hard to comprehend-a
top-of-mind issue for all of you and one that's now landing national attention.
In his State of the Union speech on March 1, President Joe Biden announced a set of
reforms to improve the safety and quality of nursing home care. It's a response to what
became so abundantly clear throughout the pandemic: substandard conditions in nursing
homes put residents and staff at risk. Ultimately, more than 200,000 residents and
staff in nursing homes died from COVID-19 (a quarter of all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.).
Broadly, Biden's initiatives focus on establishing minimum staffing requirements,
holding communities accountable for their performance, and increasing transparency
for the public. Specifically, one line item regarding the provision of safe, adequate, and
dignified care calls for reducing resident room crowding, with private rooms the goal
and phasing out those with more than three residents the first step.
As with any such sweeping reform, response has been both positive and negative. A
key sticking point for many is the issue of staffing and the lack of funding to pay for additional
workers, particularly as so many vacancies exist in the wake of COVID-19 and
competition against other potential employers persists. This staffing crisis is one I know
many of you have been mulling for some time, anticipating the types of environments
that contribute not just to recruitment but to staff satisfaction and retention.
I think we've all known we're on the precipice of major change in the senior living industry,
and these reforms are just one signal that it's begun. I can't help but feel this is the
perfect time for us to gather in Milwaukee to discuss where we head next. The design industry
is in a unique position to inform the evolution, to guide solutions that might make
those single-resident rooms a possibility or create campuses where employees will thrive.
And our goal is to ensure that Environments for Aging will be your partner along the
way. I encourage you to dive into the conference program and soak up as much as you
can. (And if you can't make it to Milwaukee, watch for session recordings coming soon.)
Keep turning the pages of this magazine, too, in which you'll find our 26th annual EFA
Design Showcase chock-full of new project examples capturing emerging design solutions
and delivering lots of inspiration.
Meanwhile, if we cross paths in April, stop and say hi-we have a lot to discuss.
JENNIFER KOVACS SILVIS
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
JENNIFER.SILVIS@
EMERALDX.COM
spring 2022 | 11

Environments for Aging - Spring 2022

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