Riverview Retirement Community is based in Spokane, WA.
According to the continuing care retirement community’s website, it delivers “the full spectrum of living options.” No surprise there, as that is basically what CCRCs are supposed to do.
That full spectrum assurance convinced Tom and Rosemarie Talkington to move there 14 years ago. Knowing they could transition to higher care levels if and when the need arose gave them one less thing to worry about in old age, as local television station KXLY reported.
But it appears to have been an empty promise.
Riverview recently informed the couple via letter that its nursing home component was shutting down. Ownership blamed COVID-19. Regardless, Riverview is clearly not delivering on a promise made to the Talkingtons. Or to any other of its residents, for that matter.
Worse still, it is continuing to market itself as a CCRC. Which is sort of like claiming to be a Christian, except for the part about believing in Jesus.
Sadly, Riverview Retirement Community might not just be a troubling outlier. Actually, it might more closely resemble the proverbial canary in a coal mine. To be sure, the pandemic has sent shock waves through every part of the eldercare continuum. And there is a lot of soul searching going on.
For any operator, being forced to curtail services is an unpleasant development. But to keep promising something that longer exists?
In a word, I’d call it chutzpah. But a district attorney might prefer a term affiliated with a longer sentence.
John O’Connor is Editorial Director for McKnight’s
