Marketing Senior Living-Big Article today

M1

Lead article in the Washington Post this morning is about A Place For Mom--37.5% of their "Best of Senior Living" facilities have been cited for serious substandard care, and the reviews are manipulated. Cautionary tale about doing your own research. I'd post a link but am sure it's behind a paywall.

dancsfo

Thanks for sharing, I read it, and it is very maddening.

Phoenix1966

I was able to access the article, but maybe that access was a one time thing:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/16/place-for-mom-assisted-living-referral/

SusanB-dil

Another poster has warned about them. Once you contact them, they don't ever let you forget it. It has been found that the care facilities pay them to get referred.

the article is also at MSN, and will allow you to read it… copy/paste " A Place for Mom stays mum on neglect "

Agree - do your research without them. Tried to post the link, but could not. Reddit also states a warning of them.

Iris L.

It's not behind a pay wall. I read the article.

Iris

mommyandme (m&m)

I was able to get rid of them by telling them finally I was going to care for my mom. They are incessant right!

Anonymousjpl123

Boosting because this is downright terrifying. I used the website and reviews as part of my research. I very soon figured out it was kind of a scam, but still. It’s enraging. It actually makes me want to cry. Because now I’m super connected to quality resources but in the beginning or the journey I wasn’t and it felt like a godsend.

Anonymousjpl123

Also this: “A Place for Mom is now owned by private equity firms Silver Lake Partners and General Atlantic. As a privately held company, it is not required to disclose such key information as annual revenue and marketing budgets.” Making a buck off desperate people just absolutely disgusts me.

Quilting brings calm

I would never recommend them to anyone. My parents used them when they were trying to decide where to move after they sold their year round camper in Alabama. They were referred to an over 55 community that claimed to be Independent living with a AL across the street. They paid a $2000 community fee. The first week the weekly cleaning lady called because my mom couldn’t sort out her medications. Within three weeks we had a disaster on our hands and were working on an emergency move to our home state. They lived there 5 weeks total. Mom spent a week in the hospital here, a month in rehab and I moved them into an AL.

MN Chickadee

It's behind a paywall for me but I have heard plenty about APFM. I noticed there are smaller mom & pop outfits popping up in my state that do a similar service, and I wonder how "scammy" they are. They present themselves as a local owner, somebody who has previously worked in the long term care or nursing industry and knowledgeable about the local scene. But they aren't a geriatric care manager who works for a fee from the family, they operate the same as APFM - "free" to the family and has contracts with specific facilities and they get a kickback from the facility when they place someone. You certainly aren't going to tour the cream of the crop facilities with them - the good places would never have the need to contract with such a company. I mean, what thing - a facility needing to pay money to a third party in order to fill their beds. No wonder so many with APFM have citations for bad care; they can't stand on their reputations and resort to these tactics.