From their inception, life plan communities, also known as continuing care retirement communities or CCRCs, typically featured an assortment of independent living residences and a nursing home. The nursing home was largely intended for individuals who had initially moved into an independent residence but needed nursing home care when their health changed.
The rule of thumb for these young life plan communities was simple: You needed one nursing home bed for every four independent living residences on your campus.
Life plan communities have evolved since those early days, and so has that rule of thumb.
After the passage of Medicare in 1965, for example, many life plan communities began establishing Medicare-certified skilled nursing settings so residents could use Medicare’s skilled nursing benefit to pay for post-acute care. As a result, most nursing homes in today’s life plan communities have two components: a Medicare-certified skilled nursing facility (SNF) and a long-term care (LTC) setting that is not covered by Medicare and generally serves long-stay residents living with dementia or other chronic conditions.
During the past decade, many life plan communities also added assisted living apartments to their campuses as a way to accommodate residents who need assistance with activities of daily living but do not need nursing home care.
