Baby Boomers and Home Sharing
Home sharing becoming more popular for boomers and seniors, particularly women.
Sewing Group at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes Threads the Needle for Charity
The talented and prolific women’s sewing group at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes Studios of Art in Chisago City, Minn., enthusiastically works together to produce handmade quilts, blankets and even dolls — all for charity.
Ecumen Century Club: Happy 100th Birthday to Ruth Benson
Ecumen honors Ruth Benson, a resident at Heritage Living Center in Park Rapids, Minn., who turned 100 on July 26, 2014.
Last Week's Top 5 Blog Posts- July 28
A Superior Way of Life, Retirement Wisdom, Matt McNeill, Senior Athlete Photos, and Case of the Disappearing Hearing Aid...
In case you missed out on the latest news, here are the blog posts our online visitors found most interesting last week:
Duluthian Magazine Features "A Superior Way of Life" at Ecumen Lakeshore in Duluth
Ecumen's Matt McNeill Named Fellow In National Aging-Services Leadership Program
Dig These Senior Athlete Photos by Angela Jimenez
The Case of the Disappearing Hearing Aid- By Jim Klobuchar
To read more Changing Aging blog posts or to learn more about Ecumen, please visit ecumen.org!
The Case of the Disappearing Hearing Aid - By Jim Klobuchar
The miracles of the modern hearing aid are well documented. It has restored and expanded the gifts of normal conversation. Millions of us have been spared the awkward gymnastics of cupping our ears to learn the cost of a hamburger. We can ask directions to the restroom without walking around with a note pad.
The hearing aid’s virtues go far beyond those humble gifts of daily living. We can watch television without turning up the sound to levels that provoke lawsuits from the neighbors. We can listen to relatives on the phone without risking the embarrassment of hanging up while they’re still talking.
All of this liberation does come at a price. When you finally abandon your pride and admit that you need mechanical help you either have to dig into savings or stop playing bingo games. The latest listings put a pair of quality hearing aids in the $6,000 range.
You can travel around the world for less. Most dealers cushion the shock with a clause that guarantees a replacement in the event of loss—one time only.
My first set fell victim to an overzealous cleanup crew in the motel where I spent the night out of town. I applied for replacements, received them and thereafter took care keeping the hearing aids within predictable range each morning. Apart from fumbling with the battery changes, my hearing aids caused me no problems for the last nearly two years—until a few days ago in the middle of a massive mid-summer rainstorm.
For the last few months, my wife and I have been storing most of our portable belongings in preparation for a change in living quarters. This involves solemn and occasionally frosty arguments about what furniture needs to be sacrificed, whose Egyptian rug is headed for the Salvation Army, how many volumes of Agatha Christie are enough and what is the next destination my wife’s grandfather clock.
We were maintaining our schedules reasonably well heading into the climatic afternoon when we sorted and packed 12 boxes of books in our garage and loaded them into the car. In an intermittent rainstorm we drove four miles to the storage, stacked the boxes carefully to preserve space and, satisfied, we exchanged high fives and drove home.
There I discovered that the hearing aid on my right ear was gone.
We exchanged theories with reasonable calm. “It could have fallen when we were loading,” my wife theorized. “More likely,” I said, “it slipped off while I was changing clothes.”
I ransacked the closet, scoured every inch of the garage floor, checked out the car seats and burrowed into the odds-and-ends receptacle between the front seats, and prowled the grass lawn bordering the driveway.
“You might have dropped it loading the boxes in the storage,” my wife said. I said that was unlikely because I remembered looking over the storage bin floor for anything we might have dropped. There was nothing on the floor. But we drove back to the storage. “It could be outside in the storage driveway,” my wife said. I chivalrously smiled at my wife’s well-meaning suggestion.
I sloshed through the grass, heavy with rainwater, and in my deepening gloom emptied a trash can I was working on before we drove to the storage. My wife thought the storage bin itself was a more likely culprit.
At this stage and facing a cool $3,000 to $6,000 in replacement costs on the hearing aid, I drove back to the storage. While my wife scanned the driveway outside, I roamed the storage bin, examining every inch of the surface. The missing hearing aid wasn’t back home, and it couldn’t have slipped into the boxes. I was preparing to make one more sweep through the storage floor when my wife called sweetly from the storage driveway. I walked over and found her pointing to the entrance of the storage bins.
The hearing aid was lying there unscathed.
More or less exactly as she’d predicted…
I drove home silently.
“I thought,” my wife said, “it was a great team effort.”
Duluthian Magazine Features “A Superior Way of Life” at Ecumen Lakeshore in Duluth
“Who wouldn’t want this lifestyle?” a resident asks in a recent article in Duluthian Magazine article profiling Ecumen Lakeshore on Lake Superior in Duluth. When Ecumen opened the campus in 2005, one of its goals was to counter the prevailing stereotypes of senior living. Take a look at the Duluthian article for some residents’ perspectives on what it’s like to live by the lake and watch the ships come in.
Dig These Senior Athlete Photos By Angela Jimenez
Photographer Angela Jimenez takes Inspiring photos of senior athletes from around the world.
Ecumen’s Matt McNeill Named Fellow In National Aging-Services Leadership Program
Matt McNeill, director of business development at Ecumen, has been selected as a member the LeadingAge 2015 Leadership Academy program.
The Leadership Academy is a year-long national program that provides a challenging learning environment to strengthen the leadership skills of not-for-profit aging-services professionals. Fellows will meet throughout the year to explore diverse perspectives from aging services leaders, learn from innovative care and service models, enhance their leadership skills and core competencies, and advance person-centered programming in aging services.
“The Academy is built on the power of collaboration and community to develop the innovative, person-directed programs our elders deserve,” LeadingAge president and CEO Larry Minnix said, “Together, these individuals will learn valuable leadership skills that will help their organizations offer seniors the services they need, when they need them, in a place they can call home.”
Julie Murray, Ecumen’s vice president of sales, marketing and business development, said, “We’re very proud of this recognition of Matt’s work and look forward to the great ideas we know he will bring back from the Leadership Academy.”
McNeill joined Ecumen a year and a half ago as regional sales and marketing manager and was recently promoted to director of business development. Before joining Ecumen, he was corporate director of marketing for Walker Methodist and has worked at StoneArch Creative in Minneapolis, Aurora Health Care in Wisconsin and University of Chicago Hospitals. He has over 10 years of strategy development, marketing planning and sales team leadership, as well as advertising agency and business development background.
For more about LeadingAge Leadership Academy, visit http://www.leadingage.org/LeadershipAcademy.aspx
Minnesota Nursing Homes Exceed National Antipsychotic Medication Reduction goal
Ecumen is proud to be a partner in the important work of reducing the use of unnecessary antipsychotic drugs in all Minnesota nursing homes. The Minnesota Partnership to Improve Dementia Care recently announced its 2014 first quarter results, which exceeded the national reduction goal. Below is the full press release from Statis Health:
MINNESOTA NURSING HOMES EXCEED NATIONAL ANTIPSYCHOTIC MEDICATION REDUCTION GOAL
The Minnesota Partnership to Improve Dementia Care assisted Minnesota nursing homes to achieve a 15.7 percent reduction in the use of inappropriate antipsychotic medications; the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) national goal was a 15 percent reduction.
The Minnesota Partnership to Improve Dementia Care, led by Stratis Health, is pleased to announce that Minnesota nursing homes have succeeded in the difficult work of reducing the use of unnecessary and inappropriate antipsychotic medications. First quarter 2014 data recently released by CMS showed a reduction of 15.7 percent in Minnesota nursing homes. This success exceeded CMS’s national goal to reduce the use of antipsychotic medications for long-stay residents in nursing homes by 15 percent.
The Minnesota Partnership to Improve Dementia Care was formed in October 2012 to shape Minnesota’s response to the directive included in CMS’s National Partnership to Improve Dementia Care. This national directive was inspired by the findings of a 2011 report from the Office of the Inspector General. The report indicated that 83 percent of nursing home residents on antipsychotic medications did not have diagnoses that warranted the use of such medications. CMS established the National Partnership to Improve Dementia Care in Nursing Homes and began collaborating with state, various agencies, and stakeholder organizations to encourage nursing homes to reduce inappropriate and unnecessary antipsychotic medications. CMS’s national mandate included a tiered reduction plan, of which a 15 percent reduction by 2014 was the initial goal.
The Minnesota Partnership to Improve Dementia Care has:
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Completed a needs assessment
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Developed and distributed a physician letter that explains the reduction goal and asks for physician assistance in the efforts to reduce the use of inappropriate antipsychotic medications
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Developed a family resource that explains why antipsychotic medications are used and the importance of eliminating inappropriate use
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Provided technical assistance to reduce the use of antipsychotic medications in Minnesota nursing homes that have high rates of use
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Disseminated best practice alternatives nursing homes can use in place of antipsychotic medications
The partnership includes:
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Act on Alzheimer’s
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Aging Services of Minnesota
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The Alzheimer’s Association
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American Society for Consultant Pharmacists - Minnesota Chapter
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Care Providers of Minnesota
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Ecumen
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Minnesota Medical Directors Association
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Great Lakes Chapter of the Advanced Practice Nurses Association
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HealthEast Bethesda Hospital
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Minnesota Board on Aging
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Minnesota Department of Health
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Minnesota Department of Human Services
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Minnesota Hospital Association
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Minnesota Veterans Homes
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Office of the Ombudsman for Long Term Care
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Stratis Health
The Minnesota Partnership to Improve Dementia Care congratulates Minnesota nursing homes for achieving this outstanding reduction in the inappropriate and unnecessary use of antipsychotic medications. The partnership looks forward to shaping Minnesota’s efforts to achieve the second stage of goals that CMS is expected to announce in late 2014.
For more information about the Minnesota Partnership to Improve Dementia Care, contact Kristi Wergin, RN, BSN, CPHQ, Program Manager, Stratis Health, kwergin@stratishealth.org, 952-853-8561, or, Kathie Nichols, BSN, RN, CRRN, Nursing Home Liaison, Stratis Health, knichols@stratishealth.org, 952-853-8590.
The Latest in Alzheimer’s Research
Recent research on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is beginning to get lots of attention from mainstream media. Here’s a roundup of items over the past month that caught the attention of Dr. Tracy Tomac, Ecumen's consulting psychiatrist.