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draining human will and devouring public dollars.Several years ago Ecumen had a decision to make: tear down the outdated Lakeshore nursing home and sell the lakeside land on London Road to a developer to build homes, or move forward and serve seniors and others in new ways.Duluth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.