LiveWell | Frequently Asked Questions

LiveWell By Blakeford is a program for healthy and independent people who want to live at home as they age. LiveWell provides a whole host of wellness and preventive services to those who are independent, and then if your health unexpectedly changes, guarantees a full plan of care services for a lifetime. LiveWell not only covers the cost of these long-term care services, it also arranges them and provides them in the comfort of your own home. Now, you know you have a plan for your future with Blakeford, and you can have it while living at home.

For more than 21 years, Blakeford has served families in the Middle Tennessee area with residential services. We recognized that 90% of older adults want to live at home, and it is important to provide an offering to meet that need which combines features of residential services, home care and long-term care insurance. After studying the most successful home- and community-based models in the country, we were able to develop a program that would work here in Nashville.

While this is a new program in Nashville, there are 30+ programs throughout the United States, many of which have been operating for more than ten years. We work with the best healthcare and financial experts in the industry to inform how we operate our program. They will tell you that programs like ours ensure their members can afford long-term care for a lifetime, they are sustainable, and most importantly, they significantly reduce the need for a permanent relocation to a long-term care facility. There is more very positive data on the horizon about the distinct benefit of the care coordination feature of the program in significantly reducing hospital readmission rates.

From the day you join, the focus of the program is proactively keeping you well and independent in your home. Our care coordinator comes to your home for an initial Wellness Visit as part of getting to know you and your family. Later when you have a change in your health status, our care coordinator will develop a personal care plan that to help you with activities like home chores, personal care, transportation, and medication management. And if there is a time when your needs increase further and you can no longer stay safely at home, the plan covers facility care as well.

You must be healthy and independent to join and interested in planning for your future long-term care needs. You are passionate about staying in your own home for a lifetime. You might be single or widowed and looking for the coordination and support LiveWell can provide. You might be a married couple looking for a plan to stay together if your health changes. Having a long-term care insurance policy does not exclude you from LiveWell membership. You can either supplement or replace a long-term care insurance policy if you have one.

LiveWell members can continue to carry their long-term care insurance or they can choose to discontinue it. LiveWell gives you immediate coverage, more and earlier benefits and a local, personal approach to your care. No elimination periods. No gaps. No 1-800 numbers.

To be considered, individuals must be: 1) age 60 or older; 2) living within 30 miles of our Nashville, Tennessee, Green Hills location 3) living independently; and 4) currently without a diagnosis of a long-term degenerative disease.

Our LiveWell team member will schedule a mutually convenient time with you to complete the short application in your home. We will gather information from you about your health history and also ask you to complete a brief memory screening. We’ll also ask you sign medical releases and then we’ll take it from there in requesting your medical records.

Each member pays a one-time membership fee and a monthly fee. These fees cover what you need, when you need it, for as long as you need it. Your fees will not increase when the program begins providing care to you, whether you need a little care or a lot of care. There is a discount of 5% for couples that enroll together. We do counsel our members to expect an annual inflationary increase to their monthly fees, which has historically been very moderate.

The majority (70%) of people over the age of 65 are going to need some care in the future for an average of three years, 15% will need more than five years of care. By paying now and committing to your monthly fee, you will see a considerable savings over the cost of unplanned and unexpected nursing home care. In 2020, annual costs of assisted living averaged $44,640/year, and nursing home costs averaged $94,900/year.

No, Medicare only pays for long-term care if you require skilled services or rehabilitative care. It does not pay for non-skilled assistance with transportation, personal care, homemaking or medication assistance. Statistics indicate that these are the things that you are most likely to need long-term care assistance with.

Blakeford At Home is a fee-for-service program that you pay at full cost when you need it. LiveWell By Blakeford is for healthy and independent older adults who have the opportunity to prepay for services that they might need in the future and thus benefit from substantial cost savings over the long term.

If you reconsider and decide you would prefer to live in our community, we will make it as easy as possible for you to transition. You will be given priority on the waitlist, and any refund of your membership fee that is due will be applied as a credit to the residential deposit at Blakeford at Green Hills.

Educational seminars are the best way to get an overview and familiarize yourself with the program, the costs, who it is right for and how it can help you live at home successfully and safely for your lifetime. Seminars are held several times each month in convenient locations throughout the service area.

We realize this is a very important life and financial decision for you and your family. Following attendance at one of our educational seminars, we typically meet with interested people at least one more time. Once the application process is started, it takes two to four weeks to complete, depending on the length of time it takes to receive medical records.