I can vividly recall the concern, anxiety and emotion I experienced while anticipating placing the last of my six older sisters in a nursing home. The horror stories, unfounded claims of abuse and lack of proper elder care consumed me.

As a longtime caregiver for my sisters and now a longtime volunteer at ElderWood Health Care at Crestwood in Niagara Falls, I can say I’ve “walked the walk” and feel obligated to “talk the talk” about the goings-on in a long-term health care facility today and the dramatic changes that will revolutionize elder care.

First of all, nursing homes are under close scrutiny, usually in the form of unannounced visits by the New York State Department of Health and the American Health Care Association.

An Ombudsman Program is federally mandated under Title III of the Older Americans Act. All programs, concerns about nursing home residents’ rights, suspected neglect and quality of care remain confidential. (Ombudsmen do not work for the facility; they advocate for the residents free of charge.)

More importantly, all staff members specialize in elder care: doctors, nurses (R. N. s and L. P. N. s), certified nurse’s aides, social workers and nutritionists.

Physical and occupational therapy programs mandate routine walking and exercising of the arms, legs and torso. Activities programs — such as crafting, games and baking—are geared to “exercise” the residents’ minds and bodies. Mobility is the key to avoiding bedsores, circulation problems and muscle tightness.

Every new scratch, bruise and abrasion on a resident is thoroughly investigated to find its cause, whether by accident or self-inflicted, and the details are kept on file.

I write from my personal experience as a devoted volunteer at ElderWood Health Care. I am confident other elder care facilities have a similar scenario.

Western New York has the 10th highest percentage of senior citizens among the nation’s 103 metro areas with populations of more than 500,000.

Taking these demographics into consideration, experts in the field of elder care formed the Western New York Alliance for Person-Centered Care.

Person-centered care is a revolutionary approach to long-term care that is being adopted by facilities across the nation. Person-centered care encourages the highest level of quality of life and seeks to celebrate the individual, helping one to grow and truly experience a life worth living regardless of one’s personal condition.

In most settings, long-term care is provided by the traditional medical model, much like a hospital, based on institutional schedules to which the resident must conform. Person-centered care allows the residents to choose when to get out of bed in the morning, when and what to eat, what activities are appealing and how their environment should look.

According to a recent survey of Western New York providers, 77 nursing homes and assisted living facilities — more than half of the providers in those categories — have expressed an interest in person-centered care. Twenty-two of those facilities indicated they were in “synch” with some aspects of person-centered care and 11 are actively advancing the model within their organizations.

Incidentally, my sister’s residency at Crestwood was a Godsend. All my anxiety about false claims of elder abuse was for naught.