Sandy Timmermann might have taken a career path working with kids, given her upbringing on Long Island and in New Jersey as the daughter of a teacher and a YMCA director.
Instead, she is working to help their grandparents.
Timmermann is executive director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute, a Westport-based think tank that publishes a series of studies throughout the year ”“ none getting more attention than its annual look each October at the cost of nursing home facilities in states and metropolitan areas, undertaken in conjunction with Massachusetts-based LifePlans Inc.
“I”™ve always been amazed and admiring of MetLife to have the foresight to allow this kind of unit to operate,” said Timmermann, who lives in Fairfield. “We have five gerontologists on the staff ”¦ We know the field very well.”
Besides the nursing home study, MetLife Mature Market Institute also publishes reports on retirement and financial planning for seniors, the costs of children caring for their aging parents and a recent report on American grandparents that found the recession has contributed to an increase in multigenerational households.
Demand for more services
As it turns out, even as her parents were guiding kids, Timmermann was getting home-schooled in the rewards and challenges of working with seniors ”“ her grandmother lived with her family over the last years of her life.
After graduating from the University of Colorado, Timmermann went on to get a doctorate in gerontology from Columbia University. She has since chaired both the Business Forum on Aging and the National Alliance for Caregiving, the latter of which co-produced the MetLife Mature Market Institute report on the challenges faced by children caring for their aging parents.
Those looking for advice or help on that front face a bewildering array of agencies, starting with the U.S Department of Health and Human Services and filtering all the way down to municipal groups such as the Westport Council on Aging.
Timmermann thinks entrepreneurs are missing an opportunity.
“I think it”™s a good opportunity for people to start businesses focused on home-delivered services,” Timmermann said. “Some people could afford to pay for some of these services, but there aren”™t enough of these services available.”
Increases across the board
The foremost challenge, of course, is paying for future nursing home care, with few young people having the foresight ”“ or in the grips of the recession, the cash ”“ to get long-term care insurance covering future nursing home costs.
The average daily rate for a private room in nursing homes nationally rose 4.4 percent in 2011, to $239 according to MetLife Mature Market Institute”™s October study. Alaska remains the runaway cost leader at $655 daily for a private room in a nursing home on average. In San Francisco, a private room costs $485 daily on average, with the Stamford area ranking third nationally at $425.
In New York, the survey specifies average costs only for New York City, Rochester and Syracuse, lumping in the Hudson Valley, Long Island and other swaths of the state into a catchall category.
Locally, assisted-living communities reported an average cost of about $4,850, with Washington, D.C., the most expensive place in the nation on that front, and parts of New Jersey, New Hampshire and Maine topping the $5,000 mark.
Fairfield County trailed only parts of Minnesota for the cost of a home-health aide, at $29 an hour on average.
“Increases this year were consistently more across the board,” Timmermann said.
