Family caregivers, it’s time to take that vacation, schedule that doctor’s appointment, and say yes to that work trip. A new website, dubbed the Airbnb for assisted living, is revolutionizing how family caregivers find short-term care for their loved ones.
Booking Short-Term Care Lodging Made Easy
The online platform Seniorly aggregates empty beds in assisted living centers across the country, allowing caregivers to easily find and assess facilities that have openings when they need them.
Seniorly’s service is quite literally opening doors — offering families the opportunity to book rooms for as little as three days to three months at centers that typically only provided long-term care. “Seniorly makes finding and booking short-term care stays at assisted living communities for seniors as simple and easy as booking a place to stay on Airbnb.” Seniorly CEO Arthur Bretschneider told the Huffington Post.
Bretschneider, 31, who grew up working in assisted living centers with his father, goes on to explain that assisted living communities tend to operate at an 85-95 percent rate of occupancy. This means that more often than not, local caregiving centers have open beds they could be renting out to family caregivers and seniors who need them.
Care That’s Needed–When It’s Needed
The San Francisco startup says the idea behind Seniorly was to take the stress out of finding the short-term care family caregivers need. This help can range from specialized care for their loved one after a major surgery, or simply someone to fill in while they take a trip.
“Short-term care provides these families with peace of mind that their loved one will be safe, well-cared for and happy while they are gone” Bretschneider explained.
The head of community outreach for San Diego’s Alzheimer’s Association, Ana González Seda, told the San Diego Union Tribune that this kind of website is important for families — especially because asking for this type of help can be hard. “There needs to be more awareness on this topic. Caregivers often don’t want to give up time with their loved ones, or they feel bad or guilty if they want to take a break.”
How It Works
Seniorly works like this: you go to the website and see if your city is available. From there, you can scroll through assisted living centers that have open beds — just like you would on Airbnb. But Seniorly also adds a dash of ‘Yelp’ into the mix — allowing caregivers to review the assisted living centers, as well as highlighting other reviews from across the web.
Bretschneider explains that the assisted living centers are also properly evaluated by industry experts to give customers peace of mind, “We have our own vetting system where we aggregate data from across the web, including state licensing reports, that help vet properties we choose to work with. All communities on Seniorly’s site offering short-term care are visited, interviewed and deemed trustworthy by Seniorly’s Senior Care Experts.”
While it is easy to compare Seniorly to Airbnb, there is more to the process than booking a room and showing up. Customers must provide the assisted living center with proper medical records from a physician assessing their health. Many might argue though, that’s a small price to pay for such a convenient service.
Bookings through Seniorly typically cost between $100 and $300 per day.
The company makes money by charging the assisted living centers for slots on the site — for example, taking a percentage of the fare from their bookings.
Most of the cities are in California at this time, like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. But, Seniorly, which is backed by $1.5 million in seed funding, is already expanding to Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Boston — with more cities to come.
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