Since I have plenty of free time lately, I’ve been visiting my grandfather who was placed in a nursing home a few months ago. My parents had been taking care of my grandfather until it became too burdensome for them to be able to work full time  and take care of my elderly grandfather.

While the nursing home he is currently domiciled in is one of the better nursing homes in the area, it is a very depressing place. The elderly residents spend most of their time in beds or wheelchairs and most never get many visitors. The odors in the place are unique to say the least likely due to diminished capacity of digestive systems and limited cleaning capability of the staff.

As I walk the facility, I can’t help but notice the sheer volume of people that exist in the facility to take care of the elderly. First, there are the office personnel that handle the facility itself. There are nurses, orderlies, cooks, cleaners, and hospice personnel. I imagine there are contract landscapers, delivery personnel, and more.

As I left the facility I kept wondering about the diminishing returns for running such a facility. There are plenty of labor resources being utilized to keep the facility going but there is also electricity, water, gas, fuel, and other energy sources being used to maintain the facility. At the end of the day when we add up all the combined resources I’m left asking what gets produced from this facility which consumes so much?

I then think about multiplying this facility by 10 million that might house the upcoming 78 million boomers that will continue to age, retire and inevitably end up in a nursing home.   Where will the time, money and effort come from over the next 20 years?   What is the return on investment in this equation?    Perhaps it is a depressing place because there doesn’t exist a profitable equation for facilities like this or perhaps no one cares and in either event it is fairly depressing to think about the future.