The question of how senior communities should deal with out-of-the-ordinary expenses resulting from hurricane evacuations and similar calamities is now being drawing media attention. Meantime, talks with federal officials about the same subject, spurred by the evacuations forced on senior-living facilities by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, are continuing.

Houston’s NBC affiliate, KPRC-TV 2, on September 27, reported that one of the country’s largest assisted-living providers, Emeritus, was requiring a $2,500 deposit from each resident of Memorial Oaks Assisted Living to defray the cost of transportation, temporary lodging, food and other care in the event a future evacuation becomes necessary. The amount is refundable at the end of each year and is not required if a relative agrees to evacuate a particular individual resident within 24 hours of a mandatory evacuation order. The report included comments from politicians and seniors advocates denouncing the deposit.

Assisted living communities, of course, face a potentially formidable expense in moving their residents to safety – and, unlike nursing homes, they don’t receive the help of federal funds.

“Assisted-living communities do not receive funds because 90 percent of their residents are paying out of private accounts,” explains Paul Williams, executive director of the Virginia-based Assisted Living Federation of America. “Nursing homes’ expenses are covered to great extent by government funds from Medicaid.”

Mr. Williams says talks with FEMA, Congress and others to see if rule changes could be made are continuing.

“Assisted-living communities have taken in frail populations during emergencies and given out a great deal of care that they were not compensated for,” Mr. Williams notes. “And a lot of communities are prepared to take them in in the future. This speaks volumes about the people who operate assisted-living communities.”

One year after the winds of Hurricane Katrina subsided, the lessons learned by Louisiana nursing homes are important for all companies in the long-term care industry. This is the second installment of an interview with Joseph Donchess, executive director of the Nursing Home Association of Louisiana (www.lnha.org) on what has happened to the senior living industry in New Orleans and what the industry now knows on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

If you’ve never gone through a hurricane or other major natural disaster, it might be hard to understand how fragile our communications systems are and how isolated we become without them. Even driving across town to deliver a message — something that may seem like the obvious step when phones and power are out — is a challenge; roads are often blocked by water, downed power lines, trees, and debris. As a result, almost all forms of communications can be down for days, or even weeks.

So it’s not a surprise that at the top of Mr. Donchess’ list of lessons learned is the need for some type of communications equipment that works when common forms do not.

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Hurricane Katrina blew great change into the nursing home industry in New Orleans. In an interview with Joseph Donchess, executive director of the Nursing Home Association of Louisiana (www.lnha.org) on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, GMMR discussed those changes and the lessons learned in the past year. This is the first installment in this interview.

“Today, in the four-parish area, 16 to 18 nursing homes remain closed. Many that remain open are operating at a fraction of their capacity,” Mr. Donchess said. There is a real question as to what is the need in the region.

Mr. Donchess said the issue of the region’s need for services was being asked well before Katrina occurred. Today, there is greater urgency to this question as the industry struggles to determine the real need after so many of the nursing home residents were dispersed throughout the United States.

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