Why Seniors Should Choose an Established Senior Living Community
When you choose a hospital, you look for experienced doctors, quality ratings and patient satisfaction scores. When you’re booking a vacation, you look for hotels with a track record for success and five-star reviews. Experience matters in these industries, and it’s worth doing the research to help you choose a well-established organization or service provider. The same is true when you’re shopping for a senior living community. Newly built senior living communities have a lot to offer when you’re looking in from the outside, but may fall short of your expectations when it comes to experience.
When you’re evaluating senior living options for yourself or a loved one, you want the reassurance that only comes with choosing an established community. Let’s explore some of the benefits of moving to an established senior living community.
Reputation for Outstanding Service
New senior living communities often boast newly constructed facilities and flashy amenities, but that doesn’t always translate to a great experience. The formula for success in senior living is built on trust and relationships that take years to develop. Newer communities often struggle to maintain staffing levels and deliver consistent service, because their energy is focused on attracting new residents instead of providing the best experience possible for residents after they move in.
The people make the biggest impact in your day-to-day experience, and you’ll see the difference at an established community where the interaction between staff members and residents feels like a family. You may be impressed by the modern design and exterior details of newer communities, but you’ll find even greater value living in an established senior living community with a reputation for outstanding service.
Experienced Staff
When staff members work together as a cohesive team to serve a community, it’s a win-win for everyone. Newer communities assemble their teams by filling positions quickly to keep up with demand as new residents move in, and there’s a learning curve as teams figure out how to work together. At established communities, you’ll find staff members with decades of experience and coworkers who’ve been working together for years.
Longevity of staff members is a sign that an organization is meeting the needs of employees, which in turn helps them meet the needs of residents. Staff members with years of experience have wisdom that comes only from working directly with older adults, including a deep understanding of best practices in senior care. Many of these professionals have dedicated their careers to improving the lives of seniors.
Anticipating Resident Needs
At newer senior living communities, there’s some guesswork involved in figuring out what residents want and need. But at Westminster, we know from experience that seniors have a multitude of different interests and priorities in retirement. Established senior living communities provide a caring and supportive environment in which all residents can flourish. That’s certainly true at Westminster … our team is committed to excellence in senior care today and every day, and we do that by anticipating the needs of residents. You’ll find an established community is more attentive to your needs, with a resident-led approach to community life that’s flexible and responsive.
Supporting Families
An established community recognizes the importance of communicating with residents and families, and focuses on providing a safe and fulfilling place to live. Having open lines of communication can become even more important as needs change over time, and you’ll have peace of mind knowing there’s a continuum of care including assisted living, memory care or skilled nursing, if needed.
Experience matters when helping families navigate these challenges together, especially as sensitive or complex issues related to senior care come up. When you’re working with an experienced senior care team, you can rest assured they’ve encountered and solved similar problems in the past, and they’ll bring relevant experience to your current situation.
Glowing Reviews from Residents
Ultimately, what matters most is what residents say about their experience. An established senior living community will have lots of reviews and testimonials from residents that offer a bird’s-eye view of community life. Hearing from residents and why they chose to live in the community can give you a real flavor for the quality of a senior living community.
A Decades-Long Commitment to Values
An established senior living community draws on its experience to provide expert care and compassionate support while moving forward with a commitment to constant improvement. For a community like ours with a long history of serving seniors, the commitment to senior living is more than a job — it’s a passion for improving the lives of seniors.
At Westminster, our shared vision with leadership and staff drives everything we do. We enrich lives in the ways we form genuine relationships, respect personal choices, and show hospitality every day. We believe hospitality means moving beyond customer service to a communitywide code of respect that allows us to deliver the ultimate level of service.
Learn More About Westminster
Westminster has a long-standing history of excellence that began in 1967 and continues to today. We were the first retirement community in Texas to combine the privacy of apartment homes with the 24/7 health services of an on-site health center, and the first to offer the Life Care option to receive and pay for services. Westminster continues to be Austin’s premier Life Plan Community , a not-for-profit corporation managed by Life Care Services®, an LCS® Company, one of the nation’s leading managers of senior living communities.
At Westminster, we’re proud to be serving seniors for 55 years and counting! Contact us to learn more about our established senior living community or to set up a tour of our independent living apartments.
