A Different Approach to Elder Care

Pioneer Network hosted their 16th annual conference in New Orleans from July 31 to August 3. The conference, “Revolutionizing the Culture of Aging,” focused on creating person-centered care for elders. Telecare’s leaders and staff from Morton Bakar Center, La Paz Geropsychiatric Center, and Garfield Neurobehavioral Center attended the conference representing the largest group from California.

David Farrell, Telecare’s Vice President of Sub-Acute Operations, with Barbara Frank and Cathie Brady of B&F Consulting, presented a full-day intensive titled, “Getting it Right for Each Resident: Creating a Culture of Prevention and Continuous Improvement.”

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The daylong intensive session presented a feasible clinical approach to improving the quality of life for elderly clients in nursing homes, by showing how changing a historically institutionalized environment to one that is person-centered can lead to the improvement of health conditions and better quality of life.

“We provide a lot of practical tips around these four foundational practices centered on better communication, which reduces the cycle time between noticing a change in an elderly client and acting on it early so it doesn’t spiral out of control and lead to the person going back to the hospital,” David said.

The four foundation practices David presented focused on creating a person-centered culture by starting with staff stability and engagement. Next, consistent assignment enables the staff to develop deeper relationships with one another and with clients. This contributes to shared problem solving via the huddles.

“Person-centered care is really always the path to success—it’s never the next pill, or the next new device—it’s about having engaged employees who really love the clients, and having huddles to engage them and hear from the staff what they’re observing and how we can do better.”

Telecare’s three skilled nursing facilities have implemented many innovative person centered care practices in order to better serve their clients.

David Farrell has done extensive work on the importance of personalized care practices as well staff stability (part I and part II). If you'd like to reach David directly with questions, please contact him at dfarrell@telecarecorp.com.