Elevate Eldercare

As leaders from across the long-term care continuum continue to search for solutions to the worsening workforce shortage Robert Espinoza has a simple piece of advice: Learn more about caregivers' challenges and solve them to help them stay in the sector. Espinoza is the vice president of policy at PHI – an eldercare workforce advocacy and research group. In this episode of "Let Me Say This About T...

As leaders from across the long-term care continuum continue to search for solutions to the worsening workforce shortage, Robert Espinoza has a simple piece of advice: Learn more about caregivers' challenges, and solve them to help them stay in the sector. As the vice president of policy at the eldercare workforce advocacy and research group PHI, Espinoza has a front-row seat to the litany of issu...

What might be the answer to the workforce crisis in long-term care?   In this edition of "Let Me Say This About That" we explore the possibilities that Robyn Stone recently shared on Elevate Eldercare. Robyn is the senior vice president for research at non-profit provider organization LeadingAge and co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center at UMass-Boston. Mary takes a closer look at the LTSS Cen...

With the workforce crisis in long-term care more dire than ever, providers face difficult decisions on an almost daily basis around maintaining a high level of care while managing a growing shortage of qualified candidates. Robyn Stone – senior vice president for research at non-profit provider organization LeadingAge and co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center at UMass-Boston – says that the so...

This past summer, the American Bar Association overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging Congress to make private rooms and bathrooms, along with other small-home touches, a prerequisite for nursing homes to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.   In this episode, Mary and Marla take a closer look at the work of the longtime director of the ABA's Commission on Law and Aging, Charles Sabatino, and...

This past summer, the American Bar Association overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging Congress to make private rooms and bathrooms, along with other small-home touches, a prerequisite for nursing homes to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.   To learn more about this attempt to overhaul the landscape by radically changing the financial incentives at play – as well as the ABA's future plans f...

Research gives you a solid foundation on which you can build your ideas and opinions and in this episode of "Let Me Say This About That" we explore the work from two leading researchers in the aging sector. University of Chicago researcher R. Tamara Konetzka, who was behind some of the earliest research into COVID-19 and nursing homes, which often generated provocative and unexpected results. And...

University of Chicago researcher R. Tamara Konetzka was behind some of the earliest research into COVID-19 and nursing homes, which often generated provocative and unexpected results: While media coverage focused on individual outbreaks and historic lapses in infection control, Konetzka's work suggested that past quality didn't have much of an impact on a nursing home's pandemic risk when compared...

Evidence-based practices form the bedrock of quality health care services, but as we continue to seek real reforms in long-term care, Sheryl Zimmerman believes researchers need to flip the script – and also embrace practice-based evidence. Instead of waiting years to see which new theories and ideas may eventually pan out into best practices, Zimmerman – a distinguished professor at the University...

Safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines brought a long-overdue end to a blanket federal ban on nursing home visitations this past March, but the surging delta variant has brought back the isolation and uncertainty of 2020 to nursing homes and other communal care facilities across the country. This week, Susan Ryan and Alex Spanko sit down with a pair of grassroots leaders working to ensure that famil...

Safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines brought a long-overdue end to a blanket federal ban on nursing home visitations this past March, but the surging delta variant has brought back the isolation and uncertainty of 2020 to nursing homes and other communal care facilities across the country. This week, Susan Ryan and Alex Spanko sit down with a pair of grassroots leaders working to ensure that famil...

As president of the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, Bill Dombi is a prominent supporter of the Choose Home Care Act of 2021 – a piece of federal legislation that would expand Medicare coverage of in-home health care services. In this episode Marla takes a closer look at what is included in the Choose Home bill – what does it mean for discharge planning from hospitals, the implicati...

As the CEO of National Association for Home Care and Hospice, Bill Dombi is a prominent supporter of the Choose Home Care Act of 2021 – a piece of federal legislation that would expand Medicare coverage of in-home health care services. Addressing the relative lack of home care alternatives to nursing facilities has become a rallying cry for lawmakers and advocates alike in the wake of the COVID-19...

In this episode of "Let Me Say This About That" Marla and Mary explore the conversation that took place between Susan Ryan and Shawn Bloom, the CEO of the National PACE Association (NPA) in Episode 109 of Elevate Eldercare. PACE, or the Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly is community-based and provides a comprehensive set of services designed to prevent unnecessary admissions to nursin...

COVID-19 continues to spur loud calls for expanded home- and community-based services for elders, which are too often lacking in many parts of the country. But there's an already powerful blueprint that organizations have followed, gradually but steadily, for decades: PACE, or Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. Across the United States, community-based PACE organizations provide a com...

With the delta variant surging among the unvaccinated and the looming specter of increased restrictions even for those who've gotten their jabs, the cycles of uncertainty that defined most of 2020 are currently making an unwelcome comeback. In Episode 107, Susan Ryan welcomes Tammy Marshall and Alex Spanko back on the podcast to talk about strategies for pandemic resiliency. In this episode of "Le...

With the delta variant surging among the unvaccinated and the looming specter of increased restrictions even for those who've gotten their jabs, the cycles of uncertainty that defined most of 2020 are currently making an unwelcome comeback. But for people who live and work in communal settings for elders, the stakes are much higher than the return of mandatory masking in indoor public spaces: How...

Larry Polivka spent more than a decade as executive director of the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University before his retirement this past May. In episode 105, Susan Ryan and Alex Spanko explore both leaders' powerful legacies in the fight to revolutionize eldercare in America. In this edition "Let Me Say This About That", Marla and Mary take a closer look at the Claude Pepper Center and...

Larry Polivka spent more than a decade as executive director of the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University before his retirement this past May. In this episode, Susan Ryan and Alex Spanko explore both leaders' powerful legacies in the fight to revolutionize eldercare in America. Pepper's life took him from extreme poverty in Alabama to a lengthy career in both the U.S. House and Senate,...

Stephen Gordon has dedicated his career to improving eldercare services and supports, and during his time as a geriatrician and educator, he observed a trend among his fellow travelers: People tend to fall in love with a specific reform idea or organization, and then have trouble seeing the potential for connections and overlap with other novel models. As the CEO of Edenbridge Health, Gordon hopes...

Stephen Gordon has dedicated his career to improving eldercare services and supports, and during his time as a geriatrician and educator, he observed a trend among his fellow travelers: People tend to fall in love with a specific reform idea or organization, and then have trouble seeing the potential for connections and overlap with other novel models. As the CEO of Edenbridge Health, Gordon hopes...

Jennifer Sodo and Max Winters share a core belief about architecture: It's not just supposed to look nice, but actually improve people's lives. The senior associates at architecture and design firm Perkins Eastman joined Susan Ryan on "Elevate Eldercare" in Episode 101, to discuss how the built and natural environments are essential to creating inclusive, empowering communities for people living w...

Jennifer Sodo and Max Winters share a core belief about architecture: It's not just supposed to look nice, but actually improve people's lives. The senior associates at architecture and design firm Perkins Eastman join "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss how the built and natural environments are essential to creating inclusive, empowering communities for people living with Alzheimer's and other dement...

"Elevate Eldercare" hits a major milestone this week with 100 episodes. One of the underlying themes throughout those programs is the prevalence of ageism that permeates society. OR as Ashton Applewhite explains, "Ageism is a prejudice against our future selves." In this edition of "Let Me Say This About That", Marla and Mary explore ageism through the lens of Beliefs, Behaviors and Systems while...

"Elevate Eldercare" hits a major milestone this week with 100 episodes, so Susan Ryan sat down with the newest member of the Green House Project team to discuss the biggest ideas from the podcast's first year – and how they can be applied to the ongoing discussion around eldercare reform in America. Alex Spanko recently joined GHP as director of communications and marketing, having previously cove...