Assisted living is the key
Imagine you are a European health or social services minister. Your hospital beds are clogged with older patients, many of whom are going to end up in nursing homes beds. Both are expensive for the state. Meanwhile, there is a housing shortage with many over 65s still living in family houses.
An obvious answer to all this would be more assisted living and particularly assisted living supplied by the private sector. The right assisted living villages can liberate those family homes and help the older generation to downsize, without turning to the state. Wrap around some good domiciliary care, and you can keep old folks away from hospital for longer.
What is surprising is how little attention politicians devote to the subject. Everywhere, the state is disengaging from the provision of such facilities itself. For instance, Denmark and the Netherlands have a vast portfolio of ageing seventies and eighties properties which are barely fit for purpose today.
We recently chatted to the CEO of a large for-profit assisted-living operator, who referred us to the massive Thames Gateway report which envisages the construction of hundreds of thousands of houses, but devotes little more than a paragraph to the elderly.
There are clear signs, however, that this is changing, and there are high hopes for a new Green Paper from the recently integrated Department of Health and Social Care.
As Europe’s politicians push the concept of integrated care that brings together health and social care, so assisted living will come into its own.
The sector is attracting great interest from institutional investors. It is no accident that Axa and Legal & General both acquired assisted living operators in the UK in 2017. We similar interest across Europe.
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to David Farbrother or call 0207 183 3779.
