A rumination about an aging county
Way back when I was a youthful 68 years old, I was the one people told “I’d have never believed you were that old.” Now, five years later, time has caught up and I’m the one who everyone asks, “May I carry your tray, Sir?” As philosopher Ferris Bueller observed, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
The growth of the elderly population in Adams County has been dramatic. In the 2000 census, people 60 years and older made up 18% of the population. In 2023, the Census estimates that age category now makes up 30% of the population. The 55 and over age group is the only age group showing growth.
And the real estate market is responding, with the development of dedicated senior communities (like Amblebrook, The Links, Deatrick Village, and the Preserves) that attract a lot of seniors.
There are many positives to attracting seniors. They buy nice houses. They probably eat out more than average, which means at least the seniors who live here year-round provide some support for restaurants in the seasons when the tourists are gone. They bring in income without (for the most part) needing a job. They don’t, again for the most part, have children that create overcrowded schools and, require new school construction.
However, this dependence on seniors comes with a cost. The seniors who live and buy a new house in Amblebrook likely are “very young” seniors. That may sound like a demographic oxymoron, but the simple fact is, “seniors” in the 65 and under age range are completely different things than seniors 75 or older. They may have more aches and pains and a longer list of medications than they did when they were 45, but compared to what awaits, demographically, 65-year-olds are physically well. Most of them can get dressed in the morning, do their own grocery shopping, and get themselves to doctor visits. By age 75, that’s beginning to change and by 80, for the most part, Father Time has caught up.
Medical care
There are many reasons for a person of any age to move to Adams County: the history, the scenery, the pace of life, and more. But nobody moves here for world-class medical care. The medical care in Gettysburg is overwhelmingly “adequate.” Specialists tend to be one-deep. You may have to wait quite a while for an appointment. Or go to York. Or Hershey. Or the DC area. As the patient’s age increases, their demand for medical services can grow rapidly. This affects medical practices, the load on the hospital’s emergency room, the number of hospital admissions, the number of cardiologists, pulmonologists, and other “-ists” we need.
After four hospital admissions between us in our first 7 years in town, my wife and I have had four admissions since last February, including three in the past four months. That’s probably extreme but it’s the trend. Adams is looking at a double whammy with the number of seniors continuing to increase as does the average age of this population. Is Adams County going to attract another 50% increase in medical practitioners? Nurses? Over the short run, it’s more likely to lose some.
Home health aides
My wife and I are examples of how a household’s medical care requirements can escalate dramatically. Healthy and independent as recently as mid-December, we’ve both had enough medical setbacks in the past month – some of them hopefully temporary – that we have been set upon by a small battalion of visiting nurses, physical therapists, home health aides, and the like.
And the medical establishment has been adequate to meet our needs. But even at the level of medical aide care we require (a small fraction of what the even grayer Gettysburg market is likely to generate in 10-15 years), the local workforce is able to meet only a small fraction of the need. Just in the past week, we have had home visits by nurses/therapists from Dover, DE; and Westminster, Mount Airy, Frederick, and Newmarket, MD.
Two certainties are that this market will need much more help in the future and that nobody is moving to Adams County to pursue a career as a home health aide. Where will we attract, say, double the current workforce? Bringing them in from, say, the Eastern Shore?
Housing
Where do they go when they’re too old for the Links? Those McMansions in Amblebrook look mighty fine when you’re moving from Fairfax County, where that $450,000 house would be $1.2 million. But where will they live when it is suddenly “more house than we need?”
A few years ago, Country Meadows proposed a very nice senior community on Old Mill Rd. near the airport. But the neighbors fought Country Meadows to the point they pulled out. It would have been a very nice addition to the pool of elderly housing. Country Meadows will never build here and it looks like other developers of assisted living are in no hurry to expand. The demand for assisted living is likely to increase sharply within the next 5-10 years. The Lutheran home and Cross Keys have long waiting lists now; where is 30% more senior housing coming from?
Summary
It seems clear that the county is looking at rapidly growing needs for doctors, nurses, hospital beds, home health aides, and elderly housing in the not-too-distant future. For a number of reasons, this doesn’t seem like an issue where “the market will adjust.” Adams County could be looking at serious elder care issues as the elderly population outgrows the infrastructure. Now isn’t too early to start thinking about this issue.