Why Are So Many Companies Scared of People?
It’s unreal how so many companies are scared of people - even their own people. Yet people are their business. Starbucks sees the power of people with their new consumer 'idea generator' website. I don’t like coffee, but I like what they’re doing.At Ecumen, we also find that the best ideas come from people who know us best - Ecumen customers and Ecumen employees. The power of people is the genesis behind Ecumen’s Innovation Station. (note: this is a PDF link)Housed on our intranet, it’s where teams of people shape new ways of doing things. Last week was our annual celebration recognizing innovators, who have done a variety of things to improve the customer experience, including:
- Specialized behavioral Alzheimer’s training- A new memory care community for people dealing with the most serious behavioral issues caused by Alzheimer’s, there are only 2 in Minnesota and a handful nationally
- New congregational senior housing.- 
Expanding outside bricks and mortar to provide seamless care in a person’s home- Expansion of technology such as wireless record keeping of care (no more paper) and
- Universal marketing, when a person walks into an assisted living community, everyone is empowered and trained to serve that person and provide a tour- Making it possible for nursing home residents to eat when they want to eat, what they want to eat (No institutional 7 a.m. wake up call and everyone going to the dining line at once … yuck)- Concierge service so that our customers have point of contact when they seek a service- Going green …the only paper products that Country Neighbors of New Richland, Minnesota, uses are recycled paper towels- 'Guest' apartments so that potential customers can 'test-drive' our communities- Retrofitted dining trays for a person’s walker to enhance independence and allow a person to fully participate in buffet-style dining- End of life care that underscores aging is all about living even at the very end of life.
THE POWER OF PEOPLE - WHAT POSSIBILITIES
Long Term Care Financing Solutions Conference at Humphrey Institute
Who is going to pay for the unprecedented numbers of seniors who will need care? How will they pay? What are better ways to pay than what America has today?Your’re invited to a discussion about potential approaches to long-term care financing reform and what states can do to be national leaders in creating solutions. The conference is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, Minnesota Health and Housing Alliance, American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA), and American Association of Retired Persons Minnesota (AARP). Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts will be one of the panelists.For more information and the conference agenda, go to: http://www.politicsandgovernance.org/events.htmlWednesday, June 4, 20088:00am - 12:15pmCowles AuditoriumHubert H. Humphrey Center301 19th Avenue S. Minneapolis, MN 55455Registration Information: This conference is FREE to attend and includes a continental breakfast. Registration is limited and handled on a first-received basis. Registration deadline is Friday, May 23, 2008. Please direct all registration questions to Beth Gabrysiak at MHHA.You can register in one of three ways:
- Register online at MHHA.com (click on events)
- Fax registration form to 651-645-0002, Attn: #8258
- Mail registration form to MHHA, 2550 University Avenue West, Suite 350 South, St. Paul, MN 55114-1900, Attn: #8258.
Once registered, you will receive an e-mail confirmation with the information for this event.
Prairie Lodge of Brooklyn Center: A New Option for Alzheimer’s Behavioral Care
'After going from crisis to crisis, Joan is finally in a place where they have the time and training to really help,' said her husband, Terry, 76, a retired math teacher and businessman from Shoreview. 'How many places can you get kicked out of? Let’s see, for us it was four in one year.' … .
Today the Minneapolis Star Tribune told a wonderful story of Ecumen’s Summit House at Prairie Lodge, a new option in Brooklyn Center, Minn., for people and families dealing with the extreme behaviors that at times accompany Alzheimer’s. Thank you to the Wagener family for choosing Ecumen’s new housing option and being so candid about telling this powerful story. We salute you!
'Drugs may be a good answer, but it should never be the first answer,' said Janelle Meyers, Ecumen’s director of Prairie Lodge. 'A resident isn’t trying to be nasty or disruptive. It’s the disease talking. If someone is screaming, they’re trying to communicate something. We need to figure out what that is.'
Above are just a few of the innovators (several of whom are pictured at last week’s Ecumen Leadership Conference) who sought a new way to help people and family members dealing with the most extreme behaviors of Alzheimer’s. They are part of an incredible team of people throughout this organization who are delivering a beautiful vision for 'Changing Aging':
We envision a world in which aging is viewed and understood inradically different ways.
Ecumen’s Prairie Lodge in Brooklyn Center: Providing a New Option for Alzheimer’s Behavioral Care
'After going from crisis to crisis, Joan is finally in a place where they have the time and training to really help,' said her husband, Terry, 76, a retired math teacher and businessman from Shoreview. 'How many places can you get kicked out of? Let’s see, for us it was four in one year.'
Terry and Joan are pictured above in the photo by Minneapolis Star Tribune photographer David Joles. Joan lives at an Ecumen community called Prairie Lodge in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, that is providing a very specialized memory care service in its Summit House residence. Read the powerful Star Tribune story here as told by Warren Wolfe. We thank Joan for living at an Ecumen community and for Terry for sharing his family’s story for others.Every 72 seconds in America someone gets Alzheimer’s. And some people are so ravaged by the disease their mind leads them to do things they would never do otherwise, such as threaten to kill their loved ones or urinate on the floor. As Ecumen’s Janelle Meyers, who leads Ecumen’s Prairie says:
'A resident isn’t trying to be nasty or disruptive. It’s the disease talking. If someone is screaming, they’re trying to communicate something. We need to figure out what that is. Drugs may be a good answer, but it should never be the first answer.'
Last week at Ecumen’s Leaderhip Conference, members of the Prairie Lodge team were honored for their innovation in creating Summit House and enhancing the lives of people (and their family members) who are dealing with the complexities of extreme behaviors caused by Alzheimer’s. They are helping us all achieve the Ecumen vision for 'Changing Aging,' We envision a world in which aging is viewed and understood in radically different ways.
Lakeshore in Duluth: The Right Care in the Right Place at the Right Time
You might have read our post the other day about a Duluth News Tribune 'story that missed the story' about Ecumen’s work in Duluth. Below is an op-ed authored by Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts and Lakeshore volunteer community board chair John Hyduke that provides context that was missing in the original story. It was published in yesterday’s Duluth News Tribune:Care systems should foster self-empowermentKathryn Roberts & John Hyduke, Duluth News TribunePublished Sunday, May 11, 2008Leadership isn’t easy. Sometimes stones get thrown at you. That’s what happened to Lakeshore, its parent organization Ecumen and all aging services and health care innovators in the May 4 News Tribune (“Profits before patient care?”).In Ecumen’s crystal ball, we see a state and country that rides the unprecedented age wave. We see people having opportunity to live at home to the very end of their lives. And we see a seamless, integrated health care system that delivers the right care in the right place at the right time.We see that future because we are helping shape it in Duluth and elsewhere.Most people don’t need long-term care and government-funded million-dollar nursing home stays. But serious disconnects in our patchwork health system often lead to institutionalizing people, over medicating, draining human will and devouring public dollars.Several years ago Ecumen had a decision to make: tear down the outdated Lakeshore nursing home and sell the lakeside land on London Road to a developer to build homes, or move forward and serve seniors and others in new ways.Duluth has plenty of nursing homes that provide long-term care. We focused on an area of need not being fully met: short-term care and rehabilitation.In our vision, people move much more easily and with greater confidence from the hospital to coordinated care and services. A nursing home becomes a specialized medical respite center for rehabilitation and chronic care management, not an under-funded, antiquated institution where someone recovering from a hip replacement shares a wing with an Alzheimer’s patient, as is all too often the case today.In our vision, care is fully funded. Now, government funds don’t cover costs of providing care at traditional nursing homes. In fact, many of Minnesota’s government-funded nursing homes operate with less than 10 days cash on hand. A choice between payroll and innovation is no choice.Instead of selling the land on London Road, we decided not only to build new buildings, but a new way to deliver care in Duluth. We replaced an outdated nursing home with a new neighborhood that has a short-term care center, and independent, assisted living, and memory care apartment homes.At the short-term care center, our entire focus is getting people better to go home. It serves people €” of all incomes €” with short-term care and rehabilitation, not long-term care. It’s a specialty center, just as there are specialty centers for oncology, child care and others. If a person needs more intensive care in a health care setting, we can coordinate it at Bayshore, which is an Ecumen-managed nursing home. We’re creating a true continuum of care.Ecumen will never build another institutional nursing home. Our society doesn’t want it. And our customers and we don’t want Lakeshore to be another traditional nursing home. That’s why we’re decertifying from Medicaid, which pays for most Americans’ long-term care nursing stays. We will continue serving all income levels at Lakeshore’s short-term care center, but we will do it under Medicare. People who want to stay beyond their Medicare benefit will by law be given the option to pay just as they would do if they wanted to stay in a hospital beyond their regular stay. But the fact is, most people don’t want to stay in a hospital or at our short-term care center long-term because they want to go home or more independent setting.Across this country people want a care system that leads with self-empowerment, is more integrated, proactive, and is focused on getting people back to where they most want to be: home. And at Ecumen, we are working hard to make that happen.Kathryn Roberts of the Twin Cities is president and CEO of Ecumen, which manages Lakeshore, Bayshore, Lakeland Shores Apartments and the Chris Jensen Health and Rehabilitation Center in Duluth. John Hyduke of Duluth is the community board chairman of Ecumen’s Lakeshore community and is president of WestmorelandFlint.
10 Examples of Disney Magic That Apply to Aging Services
'In this volatile business of ours, we can ill afford to rest on our laurels, even to pause in retrospect. Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future' - Walt Disney
We had a fabulous day at the annual Ecumen Leadership Conference yesterday, which brings together 400+ leaders from across Ecumen to meet in Minneapolis.Aging services is the ultimate customer service business. Our theme yesterday was the 'Magic of It,' which we’ve discussed here. And we got to hear the perspective from a leader at Disney (which knows a thing or two about customer service). It’s interesting how many parallels there are between creating customer magic at Disney and in aging services. Here are a few:1. No matter whether you call them customers, constituents, residents, or patients, we all must must satisfy our guests or risk losing them.2. Quality service means exceeding your guests' expectations and paying attention to detail. Exceeding expectations must be a standard call to duty. 3. Whatever we accomplish, we accomplish together.4. We have to deliver on needs and wants.5. The very fact that purpose can never be fully realized means that an organization can never stop stimulating change and progress.6. It should be the responsibility of all team members (at Disney they call them Cast Members) to attempt, to the best of their abilities, to immediately resolve a guest service failure before it becomes a guest service problem.7. Wear your guest’s shoes … Never forget the human factor. Evaluate your setting (the environment in which you serve your customers) from the customer’s perspective by experiencing it as a customer.8. Guide the customer experience with setting (the environment in which service is delivered to customers). Make sure the physical layout of your organization (or web site or phone system), interior design, and signage keep customers on the track to Quality Service.9. Separate onstage and backstage: Screen business functions that do not involve customers so that they do not interrrupt the delivery of service. Give employees a backstage space to rest and relax.10. All organizations have customers with needs that fall outside their standard processes. Make sure your processes - the policies, tasks and procedures to deliver the service - aren’t all one-size fits all, and inflexible, so that you can and meet different customer needs and wants.If you have more examples of creating a magical experience for customers, please comment.
Senior Housing Management Selection Tips From Ecumen
Ecumen has released a new whitepaper on tips for finding the right senior housing management partner - the original news release and link to this whitepaper and others follows:Latest whitepaper divulges 10 questions designed to ensure senior housing providers partner with the right management partnersSHOREVIEW, MN - May 8, 2008-- https://ecumen.org €“ Aging services provider Ecumen, one of America’s largest non-profit senior housing companies, is helping senior housing owners, who are thinking of hiring a management firm, with the release of its latest whitepaper designed to help create the best possible partnerships.“10 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Senior Housing, Nursing Home or CCRC Management Company” is based on Ecumen’s deep knowledge of the industry as not only a senior housing provider, but one of the country’s top senior housing development and management partners.“In an industry that is as customer centric as senior housing, customers vote with their feet,” states Steve Ordahl, Ecumen’s Senior Vice President, Business Development. “What this latest whitepaper provides is answers to ten key questions that, if answered properly, will help housing providers create a home where customers want to be.”Much of the advice offered in this latest paper centers around conducting detailed research on the company being considered as a partner, whether it be social or financial.“Stop by a management firm’s current community unannounced and ask yourself €“ do the customers look happy? Are the employees helpful? Does the community look and feel good?” quotes the paper.Beyond this diligent footwork, much can be learned about senior housing management firms by conducting diligent homework, especially when it comes to the firm’s financials.“A good share of management firms also own their own properties,” continues Ordahl. “In cases like this, reputable firms are willing to share the history of their financial performance. The ones that do not are oftentimes the ones you have to be more concerned about.”By heeding to the advice provided in this latest whitepaper, new senior housing providers are assured to live up to a simple, but powerful, mission of creating a home for older adults where these choose to, rather than have to live.
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Ecumen To Talk Technology and Family Caregiving at Congressional Session
Family Caregiving and Technology - an essential collaboration when you look at demographic realities and people’s desires to live as independently and empowered as possible.Next Wednesday, May 14th, in Washington, D.C., there’s going to be a great Congressional briefing led by the National Alliance for Caregiving. It will be held from 8 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. in the Rayburn Office Building, Room B-339. Entitled 'Technology to Support Family Caregiving,' speakers will include Ecumen’s Chief Operations Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations Kathy Bakkenist, as well as:- Gail Hunt, President and CEO, National Alliance for Caregiving.- Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI)- Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)- Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA)- Carol Smith, RN, PhD, University of Kansas Medical Center- Sara J. Czaja, Professor, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine- Adam Darkins, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs- Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)- Pramod Gaur, Ph.D., President Healthanywhere- David L. Whitlinger, Continua and Intel Corporation- Thomas Carey, Vice President Sales & Government Business WebMD Health Services- Charles Hillman, PE, CEO, GrandCare Systems- Kevin Sypniewski, CEO, AGIS Network- Hal Chapel, CEO, Lotsa Helping Hands
You Have to Be Strong to Carry a Crystal Ball
Sometimes leadership isn’t easy. Sometimes you get arrows shot at you. That’s what happened to our colleagues at the Ecumen community of Lakeshore in Duluth, Minnesota (and all of us who are working on creating new and better aging services) in an ugly article on the front page of Sunday’s Duluth News-Tribune by a reporter who doesn’t hold the same crystal ball that we do …What We See in Our Crystal Ball- A U.S. health care system that is completely integrated (a real system, not a bunch of fragmented 'stuff') and provides the right care at the right time in the right place.- A care system that doesn’t unnecessarily institutionalize people. This happens too often, draining a person’s will and public dollars.- Nursing homes that are specialized medical respite centers for rehablilitation and chronic care management, not under-funded, antiquated institutions where someone recovering from a hip replacement shares a wing with an Alzheimer’s patient (which also happens all too often today).What We Did Because of What We See- In Duluth, we tore down a 1950s-style nursing home. Instead of selling the valuable Lake Superior shorline to a developer, we built a new neighborhood (but also a new way to deliver services) that has a short-term care and rehabilitation center, independent living, assisted living and memory care apartment homes. - We serve many different people there (and all incomes) but our short-term care center is exactly that, it’s for short-term stays. It fills a service need in the community that wasn’t served previously. We want that short-term care center to be known as the place where people come to to get better and go home. And we’re succeeding.- If a person needs long-term intensive care, we coordinate that at an Ecumen-managed nursing home in Duluth: Bayshore. Of the 700 people we served in short-term care last year, only 30 went to a nursing home. The rest went home or to assisted living. This is moving toward an integrated system that we envision.- Because there is no federal classification for this new short-term care and rehab product, we have to license it as a 'skilled nursing facility' or a nursing home. We don’t want to create another nursing home. Duluth has plenty. Consequently, we’re decertifying from Medicaid, which pays for most Americans' long-term care nursing stays. We will continue serving all income levels at Lakeshore’s short-term care center, but we’ll do it under Medicare. People who want to stay beyond their Medicare benefit will have the option to pay just as they would do if they wanted to stay in a hospital beyond their regular stay. Fact is most people don’t want to stay in a hospital or at our short-term care center long-term because they want to go home.This is the right approach to get to the vision we see in our crystal ball. You can read the reporter’s interpretation below. This isn’t the case where the truth lies somewhere in the middle. He missed the story.What the Reporter Saw
“They felt they could make it work,” Peer said. “I thought, €˜That’s not what I’m seeing, but I’m not the expert.’ ”About 10 days later, Wick had another stroke. He’s now in a nursing home where he can’t swallow, eat or breathe on his own. He’s only 68.“I’m hoping that the stress of the placement didn’t contribute to the stroke,” Peer said. “It’s a time when there are massive changes in a person’s life. But you trust the personnel at the home.”While Peer wanted her brother to stay longer at Lakeshore, she said that was never presented as an option €” a violation of federal law, according to Bob Daly, a manager of long-term care enforcement for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.Though Lakeshore says it’s a short-term rehab center, it’s still licensed and registered as a skilled nursing facility. That means that Lakeshore has to provide the same type of long-term care that one would expect from a nursing home, Daly said €” it has to allow people to stay there as long as they want and can afford to pay.“They should have nursing services able to focus on people who don’t really need short-term rehab,” Daly said. “People who are older and slowly declining in their functions should be able to stay there.”After getting a tip those services were not available, the Minnesota Department of Health investigated and found that nearly a dozen patients were discharged and sent to other nursing homes to receive care that Lakeshore should have provided. One resident was discharged from Lakeshore for being too confused, after being there for only one night. Another resident was discharged for having dementia. Another was discharged for frequently falling.Though no actual harm came to the patients, the report noted, all those discharges violated federal law.Officials who manage Lakeshore contend that, in the case of the violations, they did nothing wrong. In fact, they say, Lakeshore was doing what it is supposed to do: send patients who need that type of care to places better-suited to provide it.But Daly said that as a licensed skilled nursing facility, Lakeshore has to provide services one would expect from a nursing home.“There was no reason for this facility to discharge these residents to other facilities,” he said.CHANGES TO BUSINESS MODELThis was the first time Daly had heard of a case like this.“I know that the nursing home industry in many instances is focusing on the short-term rehab patient,” he said. “But we’ve never had a case that I know of where a facility was actually discharging people because they didn’t meet that business model.”Lakeshore is managed by the nonprofit Ecumen, one of the country’s largest nonprofit senior housing companies. Ecumen leadership stresses that Lakeshore is not set up to provide long-term care anymore. Instead, they describe their facility as a new model of care designed to get recovering patients back to their homes as soon as possible.The services they provide are unique in the Duluth area and were developed in response to local demand, they say.“The nursing home that used to be called Lakeshore is gone,” said Eric Schubert, Ecumen’s vice president of communications. “We don’t have a nursing home there anymore. We built a new product. It’s a short-term-care rehab center. It’s not a long-term-care center.”Patients who aren’t making progress in rehab belong in traditional nursing home facilities, said Mick Finn, Ecumen’s vice president and chief of operations. Finn said Ecumen essentially has been forced to be licensed as a nursing home because there’s no licensure for a short-term-care center or any facility that fits their business model. In essence, they say, federal policies haven’t caught up to their product.“We were hoping we could be accommodated in the current licensure system and it turns out that we cannot be,” Finn said. “So, you know, our bad.”But Darcy Miner, who manages compliance monitoring for the Minnesota Department of Health, said that though Lakeshore may say it’s a short-term care facility, “it’s still certified as a skilled nursing facility.”“As such, they need to accommodate residents who develop long-term-care needs,” Miner said. “This raises a lot of very interesting questions, to say the least.”Lakeshore, or any other adult care center, must be certified as a skilled nursing facility if it wants to get Medicare reimbursement. Medicare will cover the cost of rehabilitation, room and board for up to 100 days. After that, patients must pay for services through private insurance, private dollars or Medicaid, which covers long-term care for those not able to afford it but doesn’t reimburse providers at as high a rate as Medicare does.That Lakeshore is still licensed as a nursing home and has to provide long-term care is a surprise to some in the medical community who refer patients there.“They made a public showing that they were getting rid of their long-term beds,” said Dr. Paul Sanford, an internist and chief of medicine at St. Luke’s.Sanford said he believes Lakeshore has provided exemplary care, but he doesn’t understand why patients who need long-term care are being admitted. For them, he said, he worries they might be discharged too soon.“It’s a real ethical issue,” he said.Peer wonders if that’s what happened to her brother.“If they were anxious to get rid of him €” if they weren’t 100 percent sure or at least weren’t very certain that he could succeed somewhere else €” and they encouraged it because they wanted wealthier people,” she said, “then I’m very distressed by that.”CHANGING TO ADAPTIt is no secret that most traditional nursing homes across the state and the country are struggling financially. Since 2000, 50 homes have closed in the state, according to the Minnesota Health and Housing Alliance. About a third of all the state’s nursing homes are in danger of closing, according to the Long-Term Care Imperative, an advocacy group for nursing homes.Daly, of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said that’s why more homes have turned to short-term care models to improve revenues.But some health-care experts speculate there might be financial incentive for Lakeshore to continue to be registered as a nursing home.Jennifer Schultz, a health-care economist at the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Labovitz School of Business and Economics, reviewed Lakeshore’s deficiency report from the state as well as the tip letter sent to the state, which the News Tribune obtained, and felt that Lakeshore could be targeting patients in need of care that is reimbursed at higher rates.“What I think they’re doing is they’re keeping patients as long as they need expensive rehab services that can be reimbursed at a higher rate, and then it looks like they’re transferring them to other nursing homes when they don’t need that level of skilled services and don’t get that level of reimbursement,” Schultz said. “I would say this looks suspicious and needs to be investigated.”Still, she said, Lakeshore is doing what would be expected of a business trying to stay profitable.“It’s an incentive setup to conduct that type of behavior,” she said. “And if it’s operating like a business, it’s maximizing revenues. You would expect them to game the system that way.”Jill Klingner, an assistant professor of health care and operations management at the Labovitz School of Business, also reviewed the report and tipster letter and concurred with Schultz.“They just want to keep the people that don’t need help with daily living,” she said. “They want to keep the people they can provide rehab to that they can bill additional charges for.”A business model of this type isn’t illegal, Daly said, but patients can’t be discharged if they want to stay and can pay for it.Lakeshore administrator Paul Libbon flatly denied that the facility is only seeking higher-reimbursing patients. The only patients they’re seeking, he said, are those seeking short-term care.NO LONGER WILL TAKE MEDICAIDBoth the state health department and Ecumen leaders said steps have been taken to ensure that similar violations don’t happen again. Ecumen now provides information to new patients that they can stay and receive extended care at the home.But administrators still insist that Lakeshore will only provide short-term treatment. To avoid getting patients seeking long-term care, Finn said, Lakeshore will no longer accept patients on Medicaid, or patients with low incomes.For those patients, under general reimbursement rules, that means they likely can only stay at Lakeshore for 100 days €” or the amount of time Medicare will cover 100 percent of costs before Medicaid payments kick in.To some, that poses another line of questions. Ecumen is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and raised money for the center’s renovation by saying it would help provide charity care.“Given that the community made contributions to this charitable organization, what was the community’s idea about the facility?” Klinger asked. “Did the community know this would be a high-end facility that, if you couldn’t make improvements, you’d have to go somewhere else, and they wouldn’t allow just anybody in?“It looks ugly. It sounds ugly. It is ugly.”The ELCA referred questions to Lutheran Services in America, which declined comment.But Schubert said Lakeshore provides thousands of dollars in charity care.“We’ve served a ton of low-income people that come through here for short-term rehab,” he said. “When short-term rehab is done, they can move on to places that provide people with long-term care.”Libbon agreed, noting that Lakeshore provides home-delivered meals to 100 seniors in Duluth, provides computer training to seniors and accepts Medicaid clients at the campus’s Assisted Living facility.“It’s about what do people want,” he said. “We are fortunate to have this in the city of Duluth.”
Does Age Matter in the White House?
What do you think … does age matter when it comes to choosing our next President? Post your comment below.Here’s what a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows on the subject: 72 percent of potential voters in the poll said Americans are ready to elect an African-American and 71 percent ready for a woman as U.S. president, a smaller number €” 61 percent €” said fellow voters are ready to elect a candidate older than 70. Yet Sen. John McCain is running even with both of these candidates in national polls.Ecumen journalistic partner Kay Harvey has further analysis on this at MinnPost.com.