Shepherd on the Lake and Senior Housing

Interesting article in today’s Star Tribune on a new senior housing development being built in Prior Lake by Presbyterian Homes. It’s a senior housing development that will ultimately combine a Lutheran Church, YMCA, medical center, and youth center.This is a fabulous approach and a complete no brainer! Boomers told us in our Age Wave study that they want to be close to church, health care, shopping and they want to live in a 'community,' not an institution. Kudos to Shepherd on the Lake for their vision and for integrating senior housing into their larger community.

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Steve Shields: A Long-Term Care Change Agent

Stephen Shields, CEO,and guest speaker at Ecumen’s Leadership ConferenceMeadowlark Hills Retirement Community, Manhattan, KansasEvery year Ecumen leaders from around the region get together for our daylong leadership conference in the Twin Cities. A big highlight is always our annual innovation awards, which grew out of the Ecumen Innovation Station.We also always have fabulous speakers. This year one of the speakers was Stephen Shields, CEO of Meadowlark Hills Retirement Community in Manhattan, Kansas, who spoke on how we the people have the power to transform long-term care from an institutional-laden profession to one that is completely focused on empowering the person (and customer) we serve. Steve just greatly connected with his audience and was a hugely entertaining and engaging speaker.Here’s an interview with Steve at Commonwealthfund.org. While much of the press on Steve is focused on changing the culture in nursing homes (See CBS Good Morning Story), his transformation story applies to any profession seeking and working on big-time change. We greatly enjoyed him.

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New Long-Term Care Savings Products Needed

Posted by Kathryn Roberts, CEO and President, Ecumen Last week Neal St. Anthony of the Minneapolis Star Tribune did a great story on boomers planning for retirement. He used information from the Ecumen Age Wave Study.What I hope that people took away from that is that we need new savings products that our future seniors see value in to purchase today to help them pay for senior care if they should need it. For most people, the current long-term care insurance product isn’t it. Most baby boomers find long-term care insurance difficult to understand. And baby boomers see it as a product they won’t need for years, so they don’t even consider it today.I’m a big advocate for hybrid products, as Donna O’Rourke discusses in her story 'Hybrid Long-Term Care Might Be Right For You.' on TheStreet.Com. As she points out there are few of those products out there today. Message to financial companies, insurance companies and state insurance commissioners … Boomers want these products. We have to change how people pay for their care, so that people can have the retirement they have worked for and that we can preserve dollars to pay for dignified, high-quality care for those people who cannot afford it. Retirement planning can’t end with the mortgage and car payments.

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The Top 5 Websites that are Changing Aging

Readers of Ecumen’s Changing Aging blog agree that vital, successful aging means that aging is about living. Through this forum, as the name states, we are Changing Aging, or more specifically, the traditional views on aging.But we’re certainly not alone in our efforts. Below, find the Top 5 web sites, compiled by Ecumen, that are putting aging in a whole new light:1. Civic Ventures: A think tank and an incubator, Civic Ventures generates ideas and invents programs to help society achieve the greatest return on experience. It sponsors the Purpose Prize.2. The Vital Aging Network: This site focuses on individuals who are sharing their strengths to promote and support the self-sufficiency, community participation, and quality of life of older adults.3. AgingTech: Like Ecumen, this site is dedicated to new technology that is helping seniors live where they want to live, how they want to live.4. The Zimmers: Awesome video, here that puts aging in a whole new light! 40 Britains in their 80s and 90s… 'Talkin About My Generation'.5. Eons: Think of it as a MySpace for global citizens 50+.Know of any other great sites? Leave a comment below and we’ll do another post like this soon!

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The Age Beat at the Seattle Times

The Strib Could Learn From The Seattle TimesNews came down yesterday that the Star Tribune is seeking 50 buyouts in the news room. My assumption is that doesn’t bode very well for the coverage of important issues, such as growing older.The Star Tribune, Pioneer Press and many newspapers could learn from the Seattle Times, which has a columnist, Liz Taylor, dedicated to the age beat. Her column looks at everything from long-term care insurance to choosing assisted living to technology in the senior housing profession. It’s a great resource.

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Talking Aging in the Star Tribune and N.Y. Times

A couple items on successful aging from over the weekend:Neal St. Anthony’s ColumnMinneapolis Star Tribune business columnist Neal St. Anthony wrote a column Sunday on Ecumen’s Age Wave StudyThe New York Times Magazine This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine has a series of articles related to aging baby boomers and increasing longevity. There’s another interesting story in The Times Magazine about how the TV Land cable channel is rebranding itself as the boomer channel.The Oracle of Omaha Not RetiringUber investor Warren Buffett held his annual meeting for Berkshire Hathaway fund devotees over the weekend in Omaha. Seventy-six-year-old Buffett says he has no plans to leave the holding company he’s built, because 'he loves his work too much.' Sound like someone you know?

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The Pioneer Network National Conference

Ecumen just became a sponsor of The Pioneer Network’s National Conference that is going to be occurring in Minneapolis August 1-3 of this year. The Pioneer Network brings together change agents in long-term care and senior housing and services from around the country. We’re proud to be part of this movement in changing long-term care and senior housing and services for the better.

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We Could Make This a lot Simpler

The Metropolitan Agency on Aging has a very nice web site. But let’s pretend I’m seeking help at home for a senior relative and I want to keep them out of a nursing home. Look at the myriad of terms I’d have to master: elderly waiver program (called EW), alternative care grant (sometimes called AC), Medical Assistance for Employed Persons with Disabilities (guess what that’s sometimes called: MA-EPD, or then there’s the obvious home care program called Community Directed Community Supports (CDCS). No wonder why only 120 people are using it statewide.Couldn’t we simplify all this stuff and make it easier to help keep people living where they want to live? What about running all of these programs through Agencies on Aging rather than counties and make these agencies regional resource hubs or one-stop shops for aging resources.A big transformation opportunity for nursing homes is to become 'the source' for successful aging in a community. The one place you know you can turn to for wellness information, fassistance for navigating this twisted and turned system, and putting the customer in control of how they age. The nursing homes that are able to make this turn and become community resources for successful aging are going to thrive, not merely hang by their fingertips to survive.

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Senior Momentum and Technology

Technology is playing a much bigger role in our existing senior housing and new Ecumen senior housing developments. Businessweek has a great article on technology’s growing role in improving seniors' life quality and independence. Following is an excerpt and link:

Senior Momentum

Can design and technology deliver a golden age of aging?

by Juanita Dugdale
One of life’s cruel ironies is that half of society is always dying to grow up while the other half begrudgingly grows ready to die. The halves used to balance out, with an ample labor pool of young people around to look after the elderly, who, likely as not, expired soon after retirement. But today it’s impossible to escape the sobering news that seniors will not only double in number within two decades, they will also live much longer. In 2011, the first members of the baby boom generation will turn 65. If they survive another 20 years, which is highly possible, the ranks of what demographers call the 'oldest old' will swell to epic proportions. Considering that today’s seniors already compete for care, aging boomers face a radically compromised lifestyle€”and society as a whole will suffer€”unless we quickly develop economical ways to bridge the care gap.Scared by the scenario? Then consider this for relief: The next decades may prove to be the first time in history when it will be really interesting, if not downright cool, to grow old, especially for technophiles. Since 2000, the global race to develop high-tech solutions for problems challenging the elderly has accelerated, particularly where critical shortages of caregivers already exist, as in Asia … . Read Entire ArticleJuanita Dugdale is a contributing writer to I.D. Magazine. She last reported for I.D. on the new design initiative at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is collaborating on a book about wayfinding design and also planning a seminar about the spirituality of aging.

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Important Work

Sue Schwartz Nelson, Mary Leber and Janet Ingersoll are long-term care consultants at Ecumen. They log hundreds of miles per year helping nursing homes improve their operational performance. It is behind-the-scenes work that is extremely important and the consultants aren’t often the story; however, Ecumen’s work recently was highlighted in this story in the Duluth News Tribune around their work with Chris Jensen Home.

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