Dave Devereaux seeks to provide an insider’s view about the state of America’s nursing home industry.
Photo courtesy of Dave Devereaux
Dave Devereaux is a nationally recognized expert in long-term care.
While many teenagers' first part-time jobs were at movie theaters and fast-food restaurants, Dave Devereaux, FOX '86, worked as a housekeeper at a large nursing home. This experience eventually spurred his interest in pursuing a healthcare career.
After garnering more than 45 years of professional experience, he recently authored Beyond Bedrails and Bingo: Myths, Truths, and the Future of America's Nursing Homes to help people become more informed about the long-term care industry.
Devereaux’s book examines the history, challenges and future of nursing homes and long-term care in America.
This work draws on personal experiences of being a teenaged nursing home housekeeper, holding executive positions overseeing multistate healthcare organizations and serving as his mother’s caretaker. His mother spent six years in a hospital, nursing home and memory care facility before going into hospice care.
“There are multi-generations that could be impacted by the experiences I’ve had, and that really drove the decision to tell a story about the history and current state of the industry and put together an educated forecast of what I thought it would look like so that people could become well-informed from a viewpoint that they wouldn't have access to,” said Devereaux, a Fox School Centennial Honoree and nationally recognized expert in long-term care.
Beyond Bedrails and Bingo was recently recognized by the Living Now Book Awards, which honors the finest new titles that promote a healthier, more fulfilling lifestyle.
“The Living Now Book Awards celebrate books that ‘make life better.’ This award and accompanying recognition have been humbling and most unexpected. It is, however, a head nod that this work achieved an incredibly personal objective,” Devereaux said. “This is most gratifying.”
He's hoping that this book will encourage people to engage in serious conversations about aging and the care options that are available.
“It’s a topic that people don’t often talk about because it can be scary, and this book tries to take the fear out of it,” Devereaux stated.
He says the book's release is timely as the nation's older population is rising, and people are navigating the process of choosing long-term care options for themselves or loved ones.
"The book's release could not be more appropriate," he said.
The book examines the history, challenges and future of nursing homes and long-term care in America.
Photo courtesy of Dave Deveraux
Devereaux's interest in long-term care stems from when his mother, who was a registered nurse, encouraged him to work at a large nursing home as a teenager. He was captivated by the experience of working in an environment where he engaged with residents who shared their stories of surviving the Great Depression and serving in World War I.
"Getting introduced to that as a kid was pretty powerful, and it made me want to keep coming back," Devereaux stated.
When the northeastern Pennsylvania native enrolled at Cornell University for his bachelor's degree, he started out as a hotel administration major and changed his career trajectory during his junior year. He decided that he wanted to work in the nursing home sector.
Devereaux went on to earn his graduate degree at Temple University and had a fulfilling career in healthcare. He has dedicated his career to improving systems of care and the lives of those they serve.
As Devereaux compiled information for his book, one aspect that he found intriguing is how the ages of nursing home patients changed since he started working in the industry during the early 1970s. When he first started out as a teenager, he noticed that many nursing home residents were in their late 60s and early 70s.
But by the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic changed the nature of the business as nursing homes were serving young patients with the disease who were critically ill.
As advances in HIV/AIDS treatment allowed patients to live longer, nursing homes began to see a shift from younger patients with AIDS to an increasingly older population with more traditional long-term care needs.
Then assisted living facilities came into the marketplace and provided an alternative for younger patients, which meant that traditional nursing homes ended up caring for people who were older and sicker.
By the tail end of Devereaux's career, he noticed that the nursing homes saw a renewal of younger patients in their 30s, 40s and 50s. He said these were people who had bad luck or made some bad decisions that caught up with them and challenged them physically or behaviorally, and they really weren't safe at home.
“There were waves across decades where you really did see the role of the nursing home change based on what I would classify as population health,” said Devereaux, who established the Visionary Research Fund for Temple’s College of Public Health in 2012. The fund provides philanthropic support for innovative research initiatives within CPH.
"Many times, when people were out of options, the nursing home was the last option, whether they ran out of good health, employment, money or support at home, many times that is where they ended up," he said.