Elevate Eldercare

The people who work in state long-term care ombudsman's offices are unsung heroes for residents of nursing homes, assisted living communities, and other communal care settings, helping to amplify their voices when they aren't being heard. This week on "Elevate Eldercare," we dive into the present and future of the ombudsman role on both the macro and micro levels. First, former ombudsman Penny Coo...

Within the world of aging services, there's perhaps no more popular concept than "aging in place." But what exactly does that mean, and how can we make that an attainable goal for most people? To help answer that question, we turned to Christine Foster, an interior designer with a specific focus on developing new strategies and models to help elders age in place – whether that's in their own exist...

oe Carella has a bold prescription for the future of eldercare, starting with reimagining nursing homes as hubs for entire communities. Instead of looking for ways to iterate on the institutional nursing home, such as through assisted and independent living, Carella challenges the sector to imagine a future where people actually want to move into a nursing home level of care because that's where t...

Christopher Laxton recently retired after a 40-year career in eldercare, including the last 10 at the helm of AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. He joins "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss his personal definition of retirement, reframing aging in the United States, and creating a world where eldercare – and health care writ large – is a baseline human right for all people....

When Georgetown University formed its School of Health last year, college officials deliberately left out the word "public" from the name – not as a slight against the profession, as dean Christopher King explains, but to indicate an emphasis on overall population health and wellbeing, not just traditional public-health initiatives like clean water and road safety. King joins the podcast to discus...

While researching ways to improve the end-of-life experience as part of her PhD work, Andrea Grindrod discovered something interesting: People are almost always willing to help others experiencing the death of a loved one, but rarely wanted to ask for that help themselves. So Grindrod – who has personal experience dealing with end-of-life care for both her mother-in-law and husband – developed a s...

As a physician with an MBA and a Silicon Valley programming background, Vipan Nikore has a rare perspective on the world of health technology. Nikore, co-founder and CEO of elder tech company Homecare Hub, joins "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss the gaps that exist between health care providers and the companies that create health-focused technology – as well as some potential bridges across those di...

Join the Green House-Pioneer team for the celebratory 200th episode of "Elevate Eldercare."   What started as a pandemic-era project to stay connected with long-term care providers during extended lockdowns has evolved into a platform for voices across the care continuum. Alex Spanko moderates this conversation with the leaders who have hosted most episodes of the series – Center for Innovation CE...

Long-term care is notorious for lagging behind other parts of the health care continuum – including hospitals and doctors' offices – in the adoption of technology. As co-chairs of a Moving Forward Coalition subcommittee on health information technology, Gregory Alexander and Terrence O'Malley are working to change that.   Alexander, the Helen Young alumni professor at Columbia University, and O'Ma...

Under Jeannee Parker Martin's leadership, LeadingAge California has achieved some remarkable workforce development numbers, graduating more than 1,000 students from a CNA and home health aide training program – funded by a generous $25 million state grant – in its first year alone. While not every state has California's budget surplus, dollars are only part of the equation. The California example...

In his years marketing major brands like Gillette, Pepsi, and Dannon, Jeff Weiss never encountered any push to pitch products to consumers over the age of 55. Then, once he turned 55 himself, he realized that he didn't feel like a different person just because he crossed an age milestone – he was still himself, with all the same evolving sets of desires, goals, and needs as people younger than 55....

When Jack York first started bringing computers into senior living communities in the 1990s, he never could have imagined the ways elders use technology to stay connected with loved ones and their interests today – particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. But even back then, when PCs took up entire desks and internet connections required a landline, the goal was the same as it is now: keeping el...

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of aging in place – already the overwhelming preference for most people – received more media and political attention than ever before. But Ryan Frederick believes that the phrase, while well-meaning, is too passive and restrictive, implying that aging is something that happens to people with no agency of their own. Frederick, the founder and CEO o...

The traditional nursing home took its design and operational cues from hospitals – a setting defined by its focus on physical health over all other considerations. Since the late 1970s, Planetree International has worked to infuse humanity back into hospitals and, increasingly, health care settings of all kinds. In the beginning, that meant fighting a culture where visitors had strict time limits...

Last year, the groundbreaking NASEM report on nursing home quality laid out a host of recommendations for improving the broken long-term care system in the U.S. While none of those suggestions is necessarily more important than the others, the topic of improving the LTC workforce is probably the one garnering the most attention from providers and policymakers. This week on the podcast, Dr. Kezia S...

Eldercare – and U.S. health care writ large – too often is a cold, impersonal experience for the people both giving and receiving care, as ever-increasing demands for efficiency and profit turn an intimate experience into boxes to check and line items on balance sheets. Dr. Stephen Trzeciak, chief of medicine at Cooper University Health Care and co-author of the book "Compassionomics," seeks to ch...

When the Australia-based ACH Group agreed to become the first provider outside of the United States to fully implement the Green House model, CEO Frank Weits was taking the next step in his organization's 70-year tradition of person-directed care – and building on his own experiences in eldercare, which began as a teenager growing up in the Netherlands. Weits joins Susan Ryan to discuss his vision...

More than 30 years ago, current Center for Innovation board chair Michele Holleran launched her eponymous data analytics firm with a focus that was considered revolutionary at the time: measuring the resident and staff satisfaction at senior living communities. Holleran's mission is now far more mainstream, and she joins "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss some of the more promising trends that she and...

For the first time ever, The Green House Project and Pioneer Network are hosting a single conference under the Center for Innovation banner, and we want the entire eldercare community to be there! In this week's episode, hear CFI's Penny Cook, Marla DeVries, and Joan Devine talk about the engaging speakers coming to Pittsburgh from July 23-26, including "Compassionomics" co-author Dr. Stephen Trze...

The Montessori approach to education empowers children to learn by doing activities that emphasize their innate abilities, not by rote or one-size-fits-all lessons. Inspired by his family's own experiences with the Montessori method, Cameron Camp decided to apply those principles to dementia care, a field where far too often people are boiled down to sets of symptoms and behaviors to manage within...

During the pandemic, the father-daughter team of Duncan and Erin McKellar teamed up – over Zoom, of course – to create a passion project based on their unique life experiences and skills. As both a psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of older people and the son of a woman, Lizzy, who was diagnosed with early onset dementia at age 60, Duncan has extensive firsthand experience navigating the...

This week, please enjoy the first episode of our new podcast series, "Mission Possible," produced in conjunction with the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care and AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. Each week, you'll hear in-depth interviews and conversations about the ways that leaders can turn decades of reports and recommendations into real results for t...

When Rose Marie Fagan first applied for a job as a nursing home ombudsman, she had no prior experience with long-term care or health care in general – but her status as an outsider almost immediately proved to be a much bigger asset than a liability. With her fresh eyes, Fagan was able to clearly see the injustices of the era, including physical restraints, unsanitary conditions, and dehumanizing...

Lori Smetanka of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care returns to "Elevate Eldercare" for an update on the key nursing home reform policies that she and other consumer advocates are watching most closely – including minimum staffing levels, ownership and investor transparency, and finally incorporating real person-centered care principles into day-to-day operations at all communit...

Barry Barkan played a crucial role in the formation of Pioneer Network in 1997, but his experience in eldercare goes back 20 years before that, to a fateful morning of reflection in Live Oak Park in Berkeley, Calif.   Barry joins "Elevate Eldercare" and longtime colleague Penny Cook to discuss his five decades of advocacy for elders, starting with the then-radical – and far too often, still radica...