# The incentives in elder care industry are tricky * [[There is a tradeoff between independence and security in relationships between older adults and their families]]. Older adults want to just live their lives the way they have their whole adult lives. Families of older adults want assurance that their parents/grandparents are doing ok. There is inherent tension between these to desires because anything that keeps the families more in the loop reduces independence to some degree. * Elder care facilities’ primary goal is to rent out beds and reduce costs - most of which comes from labor and hospitalizations. This means that the only way they will adopt robots is if they either increase occupancy or reduce headcount. The only places robots *might* increase occupancy is in super high end places where it can be part of the marketing material. It is very hard for a robot to replace headcount in an elder care facility because the staff do so many different tasks *and* there are minimum legal headcount requirements. * Older adults often don’t want caregivers. Instead, it’s their children who take the initiative to get one. ### Related * [[Wicked Problem]] * [[Incentives]] * [[Fern (Robotics company) postmortem]] * [[People who need eldercare products don’t have the bandwidth to ramp up on a new technology]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/The+incentives+in+elder+care+industry+are+tricky) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/The+incentives+in+elder+care+industry+are+tricky)