At Bridges® by EPOCH, our first priority is to our residents and their families, as well as the senior care professionals we work closely with, and we want you to know that EPOCH Senior Living will continue to deliver the best memory care in New England for years to come.
You may have heard that EPOCH Senior Living will transition its skilled nursing and several of its older assisted living communities to Wingate Healthcare, but what we’d like to make clear is that EPOCH will continue to focus on what it does best, where it’s most needed, which is our award-winning Bridges® memory care communities. None of our Bridges® by EPOCH communities will be affected by this transition. In fact, EPOCH will be able to increasingly focus on and grow its Bridges® program.
As of 2015, an estimated 5.3 million Americans of all ages have Alzheimer’s disease. Of those, 5.1 million are 65 years or older, while approximately 200,000 are individuals younger than 65 who were diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
The Alzheimer’s Association also estimates that between 2015 and 2025, every state and region across the country will experience a 14 percent growth in the number of people with Alzheimer’s. In New England alone, there are 275,000 individuals living with Alzheimer’s and that number is expected to grow to 352,000. Bridges® by EPOCH stands ready to offer the specialized care needed as memory loss progresses.
What’s more is the impact on caregivers. Friends and family of loved ones with Alzheimer’s and other dementias provided an estimated 17.9 billion hours of unpaid care in one year alone. For many caregivers, though, the time comes when it’s no longer feasible for their loved one to remain at home. This leads caregivers to seek a place their loved one can call home that offers the specialized care their loved one needs as their memory loss progresses. Bridges® by EPOCH is specialized in this care, and works closely with families to offer the best in our field.
We see a need, and with 20 years of experience serving seniors and their families, we’re wholly dedicated to our Bridges® memory care programs. We will continue to offer research-and evidence-based programming and highly specialized support services in our Bridges® communities. Working with National Development, we have a skilled partner to help us expand this vision to additional communities in New England.
We’re here to stay and we’re ready to meet the growing need for memory care for our aging population.