I encourage you to take a few minutes to read two articles that appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Sunday (links below). They provide insightful context to the tremendous opportunities for innovation in our profession, and Ecumen’s role in living our mission, vision and values to help lead and shape that change.

We Want to Be the Choice for Customers’ New Choices

The first story, The New Idea in Elder Care: Membership, outlines the work we and another Twin Cities-based senior services provider, DARTS, are doing to adapt Boston’s Beacon Hill Village “virtual retirement community” model in Minnesota. The Ecumen project is in Minneapolis, and it’s called Mill City Commons. It’s being designed to empower people to “age in place,” so they have the choice not to leave the neighborhood they love if they don’t want to. It also leads with the social dimension of successful aging rather than the medical dimension, while integrating both. Mill City Commons is paradigm-shifting work that’s challenging us to deliver our mission of creating home in a new way, while underscoring our vision for changing aging: We envision a world in which aging is viewed and understood in radically different ways.

We’re Making Change, Instead of Waiting for it to Happen

Star Tribune political columnist Lori Sturdevant writes in the second column Budget-Hungry Nursing Homes are So Last Century how 70% of the government dollars spent on long-term care in Minnesota goes to nursing homes. That’s not sustainable public policy, and it doesn’t match up with what consumers want. That’s why we’ve been diversifying €“ and will continue to diversify – our services across Ecumen.

The column commends our profession for “looking forward,” and highlights a citizen’s workshop held last week by the Citizens League, a leading non-partisan public policy organization. The workshop, which involved several Ecumen people focused on shaping ideas for providing and financing aging services. Ecumen helped convene the workshop as part of our commitment to shaping “what’s next.”

Two forces are coming full speed at our profession and country: new consumer expectations and needs to finance senior services in new ways. What an incredible time to be where we are today: making change instead of waiting for it to happen to us.