A Primary Care Provider on the Benefits of Senior Living

About Katie Neal

Content Manager

Katie Neal is a former Parade magazine editor who was lucky enough to interview two of her idols — Jimmy Carter and Taylor Swift —before pivoting to a career in marketing. Now she leads content strategy and engagement for Brookdale Senior Living.

The journey to senior living can be an emotional and uncertain process for some, but your healthcare provider may be a valuable resource that you haven’t fully tapped. We sat down with Dr. Grady Goodwin, a physician who is board-certified in internal medicine and has more than a decade of experiences specializing in senior care. Through that interview, he offered general advice on choosing a senior living community, patient misconceptions, and the power of social engagement.

Q: How did you start specializing in senior care?

A: I started as a hospital physician and kind of trickled into the senior care space, doing a little bit of post-acute care and skilled nursing rehab for folks who had been in the hospital. And that has now become my full-time vocation. I founded a group in 2021 called Meridian Health Partners that focuses more broadly on senior care.

Q: What are the biggest benefits of senior living from your perspective?

A: There are usually a number of benefits. Most patients I see in senior living have moved because they needed more help at home—with medications or meals or mobility issues. Moving into a community can be safer and may give them and their family peace of mind.

One of the largest benefits is that there are typically a lot of opportunities for social engagement in senior communities. I've seen an awful lot of folks living at home who are just lonely. They're by themselves most of the day. And so, senior communities are great in that respect.

Also, when you move into a senior community, you have access to professionals who specialize in taking care of folks as they age—who are often familiar, not just medically, but socially, with all of the things that can and invariably do go wrong or cause problems. Families and patients who move into communities like Brookdale will generally have access to a wonderful team who can help seniors to navigate those waters.

Q: How do you approach conversations with patients and their families about senior living?

A: The conversation with patients who are considering a move or who a provider may think need to move is often very difficult. It's just natural—people don't like change. Moving out of a house that you may have lived in for 50 years is a huge change, for example. It's right up there with losing a spouse or giving up the car keys. And frankly, you know, the families often have different goals than the patients have. So it can be a very complicated discussion.

Q: Do you find there are misconceptions about senior living that factor in to those discussions?

A: A lot of people just think it’s a nursing home. But when you're talking about long-term nursing, assisted living, memory care, independent living—those are very different. I know patients and even a lot of healthcare providers see the senior care space as just one single space without recognizing those are very different spaces. There’s a preconceived notion that all senior communities, and all levels of care in a community, are the same. That's just not true. I've found that it really helps to dig in and explain what the differences are.

Q: What advice do you give your patients about choosing a senior living community?

A: When looking at your priorities and trying to find the right community, I always tell my patients and families that one of the best metrics is, “how happy are the residents?”. Speaking to residents who actually live there is hugely important.

When I walk into a community and everyone’s in their rooms, and the doors are all shut, and it's very quiet—that's not really what I'm looking for. When I come here [to Brookdale] I love that about half the time I knock on people's doors, they're not there. They're downstairs in the common area. They're playing games. Every time I knock on a door and someone’s not there, I love it. And that happens very often here at Brookdale. And I think that is certainly the most important thing beyond just the kind of [medical] oversight that communities can offer. It's that social engagement. It's keeping people up, keeping them active.

I think the pandemic has shown us what happens to human beings when you deprive them of that sort of stimulation, and it can be difficult. I often see a difference in not just the health and medical outcomes, but the general happiness of residents who are getting that compared to those who are not.

Provider Testimonial

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