By: Sloane Airey
The memory care industry is walking a delicate balance in 2024 between innovating and “backsliding” on important testing and treatment advances.
As the industry grapples with newly approved drugs, technology built on artificial intelligence (AI), and a rapidly aging population outstripping the country’s supply of care, memory care providers are juggling leaning into the future or sticking with the past. Leadership industry-wide see promise in the many changes coming down the senior care pipeline.
Some in the space say the best is still yet to come, but only if memory care operators keep their collective eye on quality and improvement in the meantime.
Melissa Dillon, corporate director of memory care at Senior Resource Group (SRG) said new treatments with tools like AI are “looking so interesting and bright, but it’s almost like we’re not there yet.”
“We’re not at a change. We are looking for one, and no one’s landed on what that’s going to be,” Dillon told Memory Care Business.
Silverado Senior Vice President of Clinical Services Kim Butrum noted she’s keeping an eye on incoming innovations like much–discussed findings published last month about a blood test for one type of Alzheimer’s disease that could replace more invasive and expensive testing methods.
Experts hope one day, such a test could be used to catch Alzheimer’s early and extend a person’s quality of life when coupled with new drugs to slow the disease’s progression. But that could be years away.
“It feels like we are on the cusp of successful treatments that could one day be used for individuals with preclinical disease — those at risk but not yet symptomatic — although we haven’t reached that point yet,” said Burum in a recent interview with Memory Care Business.
Industry waits on new drugs
Recent notable innovations include two newly FDA-approved drugs to fight Alzheimer’s that work potentially forestalling dementia by helping remove the amyloid plaques that build up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s. But experts with memory care operators including Silverado don’t see a great rush to adoption of these drugs, either.
Last month, the FDA approved Eli Lilly’s drug, Kisunla. And in February, several thousand patients were reportedly using Biotech’s drug Leqembi after its summer 2023 FDA approval. However, experts noted that this doesn’t necessarily translate to prevalence of use in memory care units.
“It seems people are waiting to assess whether the cost of treatment and potential side effects justify the risks compared to the possible benefits,” said Silverado’s Butrum.
A 2024 survey indicated that Leqembi suffers low satisfaction rates so far due to side effects, patients needing to travel far to access infusion centers, and the struggle to get their insurance to cover the $26,500 annual cost, among other issues.
“The most exciting aspect is that these are the first medications to demonstrate in the very early stages of the disease that, if a patient can tolerate the side effects and has amyloid plaques in their brain – keeping in mind that not all dementia cases involve amyloid plaques – there could be modest symptom improvement,” Butrum explained.
AI saves ‘precious, precious time’
California-based SRG has joined many others in the industry which are investing in technology like electronic charting and smart recruiting tools. But SRG’s most impactful tech investment so far may be the artificial intelligence (AI) calendar app TSO Life, which extrapolates information from resident intake interviews into suggestions like which board games a senior care center should offer its residents, according to Dillon.
The resident profiles generated by the app alone give “precious, precious time” back to staff, Dillon says, but the AI activity suggestions also make meaningful changes to residents’ everyday lives. For example, the app suggested that residents [in one Arizona care center] overwhelmingly preferred country music.
“So we just started playing classic country music in the dining room, and the space is much more lively,” Dillon said.
Silverado, on the other hand, is among the many others in the industry wading into AI more slowly and with a focus on real-time patient monitoring.
“We are currently not using many AI-driven clinical systems, aside from CarePredict,” said Butrum, referencing the Florida-based AI company that uses a wearable device and machine learning to alert staff to resident issues like falls, depression, or urinary tract infections. “However, we continue to evaluate various innovations to determine if they could be beneficial in our environment.”
Avoiding ‘backsliding’
Dillon, a self-described “dementia nerd”, recently set up a monthly call for fellow memory care directors nationwide to share best practices in what may be a low-tech, but no less important, tool for the industry’s future. She told Memory Care Business that she hopes the industry will start to invest in professionally developing memory care executive directors and hire them to direct entire senior living communities.
“I believe that these folks are the next leaders in our communities, and it’s because a memory care director kind of runs a tiny little senior living within the senior living, they’re not just in charge of the care,” she said, noting that not every memory care director has the funding and program support she enjoys at SRG.
Experts say investing in these potential senior living community executives of tomorrow is critical given their expertise in evaluating which technology and trends should be adopted going forward.
“The issue isn’t with the implementation itself,” Butrum said of the challenges of implementing new technology in Silverado, “But rather with the process of reviewing and assessing new technologies to determine whether they could be valuable within our highly engaged memory care model.”
Dillon warns that in its haste to join the memory care improvement bandwagon, parts of the industry are not consulting memory care experts like herself and Butrum and instead are “backsliding” to outdated interventions that don’t work. For example, addressing wandering by masking exit doors with forest decal stickers, or adding “life stations” like baby cradles in the hallways which can confuse more than soothe residents.
“This is a home, just like any other section of senior living, and so I fear losing footing there,” Dillon added.
