An article last week in the Wall Street Journal titled Finding Day Care -- For Your Parents discusses how choices are growing for increasing numbers of Baby Boomers who have frail relatives they are reluctant to leave alone. Here are some interesting facts pulled from article:
- There are over 3,500 "adult" day-care centers in the US.
- Demand for these types of centers is growing at between 5% and 15% a year.
- The National Adult Day Services Association reports that these centers care for about 150,000 residents daily.
- By some industry estimates, adult day care serves at least 400,000 people nationally.
- The national average cost for adult day care is about $61 a day compared to about $152 per day for a home-health aid (8 hour day).
- Medicare & Medicaid Services allows a portion of Medicare home health-care benefits to go toward adult day care.
- MetLife for the first time included adult day care as a distinct category in its annual report on costs in the long-term care industry.
The industry has also spawned franchising. Sarah Adult Day Services Inc., based in Canton, Ohio, had six centers before it began franchising its 22-year-old operation in 2004. Now it has 54 SarahCare Adult Daycare Centers either open or in some level of development in about a dozen states. Each center serves between 40 and 50 people a day, and offers day-spa services such as salons.
Look for more employers to begin offering adult care employee benefits - much like they have been doing so with child care work-life benefits. Some have already done so as evident by this release from LifeCare, a provider of work life employee benefits.
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