Last Week's Top 5 Blog Posts - April 21
In case you missed them, here are the blog posts our online visitors found most interesting last week:
Thankful Family Honors Grand Village Caregivers
How to be a Good Caregiver When the Caregivee Doesn't Want Your Help
Ecumen's Christy Johnson Gets Very Serious About Fun and Games
Great Minds Gala Video: Ashley and Shannon Campbell Perform Tribute to Their Father
A Look at Alzheimer's Through the Eyes of a Young Doctor
For more information about Ecumen or its 37 locations, please visit ecumen.org.
Thankful Family Honors Grand Village Caregivers
Her phone was ringing off the hook. Roberta Alzen, the director of nursing at Ecumen-managed Grand Village in Grand Rapids, Minn., was caught off guard.
“Have you seen the paper?” the callers all wanted to know. She had not, but would quickly find out that she and the staff at Grand Village were being honored in a deeply touching way.
Prominently displayed on the editorial page of the Sunday Grand Rapids Herald Review was a letter from a grieving mother who had just lost her son.
Dottie Wilde of Grand Rapids had just said goodbye to her son, Donald. He was only 55. In 2012 he had a stroke and never fully recovered.
Now she wanted everyone in the community to know how well he had been cared for the last two years of his life at Grand Village — two very difficult years. “I was so thankful he was in such a good home and he got the best care he could have received,” Dottie wrote. “Everyone is so caring and so kind and they give such good nursing care to everyone.”
What made this appreciation so much more meaningful was Dottie’s background. “I spent 42 years in nursing myself,” she wrote, “so I feel I know what good patient care is. I feel the nursing staff not only takes care of the residents and patients but they also take care of the families of the residents.”
And there was special mention of Roberta, as the director of nursing. “She must keep on top of everything and this is why the care is so very good,” Dottie wrote. And she concluded: “Thank you to everyone that works in this home: nursing, housekeeping, kitchen and custodians and laundry. You were all great.”
Roberta said everyone at Grand Village was moved by such heartfelt and public thanks. She said because Donnie was so young and had so many challenges, he was a special member of the community. Everyone got involved in his care, and he, in turn, did what he could to help take care of the older members of the community.
“We all worked as a team,” Roberta said.
In this small community, Roberta said sometimes family members of residents will recognize her on the street and give her a hug. But this is the first time she and her staff have been honored so publicly.
And it means a lot. She said everyone on the staff learned from the journey with Donnie. And then — that day when they picked up the paper — they learned just how much what they did really mattered.
Ecumen Receives Shavlik Family Foundation Grant for Technology at New Detroit Lakes Center
The Shavlik Family Foundation has awarded Ecumen an $11,750 grant to bring the latest digital technology to seniors at its new aging services hub in Detroit Lakes, Minn.
Construction currently is underway for an addition to Ecumen Detroit Lakes designed to transform how senior support services are provided in the area. The project, called The Commons, is envisioned as an innovative "one-stop aging services hub” that integrates technology, socialization, fitness, nutrition and health care to help keep seniors in rural Becker County healthy and independent.
The new addition, expected to open in late summer or early fall, will include a therapy center with a hydrotherapy pool, a wellness center with a bistro, a telehealth center and a business center. The Shavlik Family Foundation grant will help equip the business center.
The business center will offer seniors in the community access to user-friendly technology including high-speed Internet service and other digital and electronic resources such as email access and Skype, iPads, touch-screen computers, wireless printers, as well as faxing, scanning and copying equipment. The center will serve the entire Detroit Lakes and surrounding area, not just residents of the campus.
“We view The Commons approach as a prototype for how senior services will be delivered in rural areas in the future,” said Janet Green, executive director of Ecumen Detroit Lakes. “We are so grateful to the Shavlik Family Foundation for understanding the critical importance of technology in helping seniors age in place and stay connected to the community.”
The Shavlik Family Foundation, of White Bear Lake, Minn., was started by Rebecca and Mark Shavlik with part of the proceeds from the acquisition of their company Shavlik Technologies in 2011, and “recognizes that access to information and technology is a basic need in our modern society and created the Foundation to provide grants to Minnesota-based non-profits to enhance access to and knowledge of technology for non-profits and the people they serve.”
Green said the hub will be a place for people in the community “to learn and have fun,” as well as a place to come for healthcare services. Although seniors are expected to be the primary users, she said the hub will have programs that cross generations.
“We have to reinvent how we care for seniors, especially in rural communities,” Green said. “Using the hub concept and the latest technology we plan to create an environment where seniors can find all the services they need to stay healthy and live independently in their homes — and stay connected to the community.”
How To Be a Good Caregiver When the Caregivee Doesn’t Want Your Help
How can you be a good caregiver to someone who is not happy to have your help? The “reluctant caregivee” is a common challenge to caregivers, even those who are close family members. Few people like the idea of relying on another person for basic needs and tend to resist even when they desperately need help.
Here’s some detailed advice from Caring.com on how to graciously give care when your help is not appreciated.
Last Week's Top 5 Blog Posts
In case you missed them, here are last week's Top 5 blog posts:
Great Minds Gala Video: Ashley and Shannon Campbell Perform Tribute to their Father
Ecumen's Christy Johnson Gets Very Serious About Fun and Games
Ecumen's Annual Report to the Community
A Look at Alzheimer's Through the Eyes of a Young Doctor
Ecumen Detroit Lakes Receives Grant to Advance Its Dementia-Friendly Work
For more information about Ecumen or its 37 locations, please visit us at ecumen.org.
Ecumen’s Christy Johnson Gets Very Serious About Fun and Games
You might think the life of an activity director at a senior community is all fun and games — not something that would come under the lens of government regulation. But it does, and those professionals who help residents find fun and joy in their lives are now scrambling to figure out how to measure their work under provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. 
Christy Johnson, who directs activities at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes in Chisago City, Minn., was on Facebook one night recently and saw a cry for help coming from New Jersey: Does anyone out there anywhere know how the new Affordable Care Act performance improvement regulations affect activity directors?
And, as a matter of fact, Christy is an expert on the subject. Quality Assurance & Performance Improvement (QAPI) programs for long-term care communities are an initiative of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). They are all about improving the quality of life and quality of care and services delivered in nursing homes.
The Affordable Care Act upped the ante, putting much more emphasis on the Performance Improvement aspect of the program. To help nursing homes understand the new approach, CMS commissioned a national collaborative effort with the University of Minnesota and Stratis Health, subject matter experts, consumer groups and nursing home stakeholders, to create helpful implementation tools.
Christy was part of that group — and the only activity director. Performance improvement is generally the purview of nursing home administrators and nurses. But because of a change in leadership at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes while the initiative was underway, Christy got a seat at the table and was just one of 17 stakeholders from across the nation. So she was on the ground floor, helping figure out how to implement the new approach.
She was honored to be part of that group, but she didn’t anticipate that one day she would get a chance to specifically help other activity directors a thousand miles away. The Facebook query came from the New Jersey Tri-County Activity Coordinators (TAC) from Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties. They were delighted to find Christy and asked her to please come to Camden, N.J., where they would be meeting.
Christy was delighted to go because she has a passion for the subject matter. “Quality improvement makes me tick,” she says.
She loves the nitty-gritty process of gathering data, measuring, analyzing and looking for ways to make things better. Yet she also loves the process of putting fun in lives of residents. It’s an unlikely combination of interests but one that dovetails perfectly with the data-driven direction health care is taking.
Christy not only knows how to do the activities, she also knows how to measure if they are getting the job done. And that sums up what CMS wants to see in the years ahead.
The New Jersey presentation was very well received, and now Christy is back in Chisago City, where she started working for Ecumen in 2002. When asked to sum up what her job is, she says: “I bring smiles.” (And she measures how well she’s doing it.)
A Look at Alzheimer’s Through the Eyes of a Young Doctor
What does a doctor do when she’s treating patients with a disease like Alzheimer’s that has no cure? Dr. Ariel Green, a Johns Hopkins geriatrician, offers a profound answer to that question in this first-person account in the Washington Post. Dr. Green realized she knew the answer before she ever went to medical school. Doctoring is a lot more than practicing medicine.
Do You Stay In-the-Know With Ecumen’s Changing Aging News?
Do you receive Ecumen’s Changing Aging News? It’s a monthly email newsletter highlighting thought-provoking information true to our vision of “a world in which aging is viewed and understood in radically different ways.” And it summarizes the most significant news about Ecumen’s own work in changing aging. To sign up, go to our “Contact Us” page on the left side and opt-in to subscribe.
Additionally, there are lots of other ways to stay in touch with Ecumen and our ongoing focus on aging issues. You can read our Changing Aging Blog on ecumen.org, and you can follow us of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Plus, each of our communities has its own Facebook page.
Join us. We are changing aging.
Ecumen's Annual Report to the Community
Ecumen is honored by the generous support of private donors, corporations and foundations. Learn more about our fundraising efforts, innovative programs and those who support our changing aging efforts in Ecumen's annual Report to the Community.
Star Tribune Editorial Calls for Awakenings Funding and Expansion Nationwide
A Star Tribune lead editorial on April 5, 2014, said Ecumen Awakenings dementia care program is “effective and compassionate” and “should become the standard of care across the nation as baby boomers swell senior ranks.”
The Star Tribune cited the Leading Age Excellence in Dementia Care Award given last month to Awakenings, which is a pioneering approach to caring for those with Alzheimer’s and other dementias without the use of highly sedating psychotropic drugs.
Noting that less than 2 percent of private philanthropic dollars in Minnesota go to programs for seniors, the Star Tribune editorial urged private foundations to acknowledge the coming age tsunami and help fund expansion of the Awakenings care model nationally.