They are difficult decisions, often made in distress. Mom falls or dad has a stroke, and the family is left to make a quick but agonizing decision: Where's the best place for healing once the doctor sends the parent home?
As many Americans head toward old age, more and more families are confronted with the tough, emotional task of finding quality, affordable elder care. And when family members live out of town or even out of state, they increasingly look to people like Michael Newman for help.
Newman, owner of Citrus Heights-based Always Best Care Senior Services, is part of a growing niche of senior placement services here and nationwide. For these services, the country's graying population increasingly means gold in a multibillion-dollar elder health care market.
"It's an explosive opportunity," said Newman, who launched his business in 1996. "There are few things you can do (that) make a difference in somebody's life and make a living."
Today, Newman's firm provides both placement services and in-home care for seniors from 19 locations operated by eight franchisees in California, Texas, Colorado and Ohio. He anticipates adding 24 more franchisees this year. The privately held company does not disclose revenue.
Senior placement services are one sliver of a U.S. elder care services industry expected to grow 6.6 percent a year to reach $264 billion in 2011, according to the Freedonia Group, market researchers based in Cleveland.
Increasing life expectancy and baby boomers entering their retirement years are partly behind the projected gains, according to a Freedonia report released in January.
"You have this tsunami of boomers inundating senior services. It's a growth industry for people who want to provide care and support for seniors," said Joe Rodrigues, long-term care ombudsman with the California Department of Aging.
And demand isn't expected to subside anytime soon.
In California, about 300,000 people are admitted to nursing homes each year. Another 400,000 receive some sort of home-based care, said Charlene Harrington, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing.
Determining the correct care option or even finding the right person to help families make the right choice can be overwhelming, said Harrington, who helped launch California Nursing Home Search (www.calnhs.org), a Web site that offers tips and quality ratings on all types of elder care, from nursing homes to hospices.
"This is not something people plan for. They wait for a crisis," said Harrington, adding that families often have just 24 to 48 hours to find placement for their loved ones before they're discharged from the hospital.
Individuals can certainly do the job themselves, but if a placement service does its homework, accessing available data and state inspection reports, it can be a very helpful tool for families, Harrington said.
"These are hard decisions. You can't expect someone to make decisions in 30 minutes. That's why having (a service) is important."
It's partly because there are so many confusing choices for elder care: assisted living, nursing homes, long-term care, hospice care.
"There's a demand for our type of service," said Jerry Schreck, who founded About Elder Care, a Roseville-based referral firm, in 1991. Schreck's firm has a database of 500 area facilities, ranging from board-and-care homes to assisted-living and long-term care facilities.
In Roseville, Schreck estimates that the number of board-and-care facilities for seniors has quadrupled, from about 15 five or six years ago to more than 60 today, he said.
"A lot of people are looking for information for down the road. They may not need it now, but five months or a year down the road they might."
Schreck does not charge clients for referrals but takes a finder's fee from the elder care facility, if the elder individual stays at least 30 days.
Similarly, clients of Always Best Care are not charged for elder-care referrals. Instead, the company receives a fee from the care facility if a family member goes there.
The state's Rodrigues said a placement service can be particularly useful for family members who live out of town. "It's not uncommon to have mom in California and the daughter in another part of the country. It's not uncommon for children to seek out someone locally they can trust."
He said families should ask very specific questions of placement agencies, in addition to doing their own homework (see accompanying box).
For an additional checklist of what to ask when checking out an elder care facility, go to www.calnhs.org.
Terry Hill, a vice president at the International Franchise Association, the Washington, D.C.-based trade organization for franchisees, said services like Schreck's and Newman's are growing.
For some franchisees, Hill said, a life event becomes a business opportunity. "People are not only looking at franchises," he said, "but they're taking care of family members, so it's top of mind."
That was the case for Schreck, who cared for his father two decades ago after he suffered a debilitating stroke that rendered him partially paralyzed and triggered dementia. The challenges Schreck faced in finding resources for his father led him to establish About Elder Care.
"Twenty years ago, the industry was nothing like it is now," he said. "It made me realize there was a need."
Call The Bee's Darrell Smith, (916) 321-1040.
