Many things have changed since the nation first went into lockdown last March, and one of those significant changes includes the way most Americans think about caregiving for themselves or their senior loved ones.

Even before the pandemic struck the nation, three out of four adults over age 50 already said they preferred to stay in their homes and communities as they aged. But after a particularly difficult year filled with lockdowns, sickness, isolation and fear, people of all ages are thinking hard about home care solutions and leaning more definitively away from long-term care facilities than ever.

Many nursing homes experienced staff shortages, astronomical infection rates, and higher fatality rates among staff members and residents than those who did not live in such facilities. CareBuilders at Home CEO David Savitsky believes that what elderly Americans endured in the past year will not soon be forgotten, and that these events and reactions may signal a long-lasting shift toward homecare instead of long-term care facilities.

“There has been a tremendous shift in the thought process on the part of people who might have been considering either assisted living or some type of community type of living,” Savitsky said. “What they’ve seen through COVID is that life can be very restricted in that type of setting. If you don’t have control over your life, someone else is going to make decisions for you — who can visit you, what happens if you get sick.”

While COVID-19 certainly created unique and unforeseen circumstances, the pandemic appears to have exposed underlying issues with long-term care facilities, including the easy transmission of communicable diseases and the control that such facilities ultimately have over their patients and their patients’ family members.

“There is no doubt that the experience people have has been seared into the minds of people 65 years or older,” Savitsky continued. “More people are going to want to continue living their lives the way they do, and not give up their independence. They don’t want to lose their independence and they don’t want to have people making decisions for them.” These feelings were surely intensified by the circumstances of the pandemic, and perhaps highlighted even more so as people watched their own loved ones in senior care facilities struggle from the isolation that came from facility-imposed lock downs meant to tamp down on the spread of the virus.

After a year of uncertainty and events, Americans finally find themselves with a light at the end of the tunnel as vaccines are more widely distributed, and many may begin to wonder what the world’s “new normal” will look like. At CareBuilders at Home, we know one thing is certain — the Home Care Industry is growing and changing, and we’ll be here to provide for our fast-growing communities and ensure that our patients receive the care they deserve.

For more information on franchising with CareBuilders at Home, feel free to reach out for more information. We would love to hear from you!