CBS reporter Harry Butcher coined the phrase “fireside chat” to capture the informal and conversational tone of President Roosevelt’s speeches during the Great Depression. History reminds us that the President wanted to speak plainly to as many Americans as possible. At that time in the 1930’s, nearly 90% of the country owned a radio and this medium offered an unprecedented forum for reaching the masses. During the opening remarks of Aging2.0 Boston’s Fireside Chat, Massachusetts Secretary of Elder Affairs Alice Bonner honored the tradition of speaking simply by soliciting a commitment from the audience. She recognized that while we were all gathered at District Hall to celebrate the promise and opportunity for a shifting vision of old age, retirement and enabling technology, there was a more pressing priority for us to seize together. IF we recognize that aging is about families and community more than it is about “old people” alone THEN, we are quickly reminded that kindness and relationship-building represent the greatest investment of “human” capital into our shared future. More literally, we were asked to make eye contact and say hello to the people we encounter in our daily lives – especially seniors seemingly alone.
With that segue in mind, the event’s Moderator, Boston Globe reporter Robert Weisman, guided an inquiry into the many insights offered by Dr Joseph Coughlin and his AgeLab team in his newly published book, “The Longevity Economy.” At the surface level, it is a book that encourages business leaders to think differently about how to position for a demographic certainty that almost “defies description.” At a deeper, more functional level, Dr. Coughlin and his team have leveraged their own brand identity and intellect to help change the conversation about aging and old age. As contextual history emerged through the fireside conversation it became clear that AgeLab has a broad and active charge – to help create an “infrastructure of wellness.” MIT is uniquely positioned to support delivery of a wellness framework to communities given that they stand at the crossroads of so many industry constituents. None among them can offer wellness alone – this outcome will only be achieved through active collaboration and convergence fostered by all champions of change.
Driverless thinking
At one point in the evening’s Q&A session, an individual asked about the promise of the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) industry. The AgeLab doesn’t just have a front row seat for observing this trend – they are actively working with Toyota (among others) to advance an understanding of how drivers respond to the increasing complexity of our modern “operating” environment. But wait – here is the rub – in response, Dr. Coughlin emphasized that in spite of all the deep learning and research underway, no one is focused (to his knowledge) on “the 20 foot” challenge. In other words, while billions of dollars have been invested in this trending technology, the functional issue of getting a person with limited mobility into or out of a vehicle has not yet been fully addressed! This single insight serves as a metaphor to the shortcomings of mainstream marketing and product development strategies. When you go the extra mile and think about the problems that you are aiming to solve from multiple perspectives, you will naturally uncover a deficit that leads to greater opportunity. To echo Secretary Bonner’s insight – let’s be sure we are investing resources into the “right” opportunities.
Hubs
The “PieterExplainsTech” YouTube channel offers a variety of tech inspired explainer videos. In Hub, Switch or Router, the viewer is introduced to three network devices (as titled) and the way in which they connect to each other. When we think of the phrase “Hub” from a layman’s perspective, it conjures the spirit of scale and connection. Imagine the wooden wheel from tinker toy sets that empowered us to make a thousand iterations of ultimately the same thing. It is not surprising that coworking studios, or other Victor Hwangenthusiasts, would gravitate to this “hub” language when seeding their own role in a burgeoning innovation ecosystem. True to form, real insights require deep thinking – a natural extension of the consumer-centric, systemic design thinking that the AgeLab represents. From a literal perspective, Hubs in a network do not distinguish or direct signals intelligently – they only replicate and push data through the network while increasing the bandwidth of our systems in the process. Switches and Routers on the other hand, make it possible to direct information more purposefully.
Switching and Routing
We are living in a time where every industry sector touts (often with their own unique sound bites) the merits of integrative or interdisciplinary thinking and yet even a cursory inventory of these vertical spaces reveal gross intellectual redundancies. We borrow thought leaders and pass them through our conference circuits but we do not always stop to consider the efficacy of our economy, business models or community landscape. The “city” historically has been a mechanism for creating and distributing goods and services and it accomplishes this monumental feat by consuming our human scale. Absent progressively planned community infrastructure (let alone serious inner-engineering), we cannot even begin to think about achieving and distributing the dimensions of wellness at scale.
We could not dismiss the subtle irony of sitting in District Hall – an incredible public innovation space that is literally dwarfed by the Boston Seaport cityscape – while sharing sentiments about an altered future state. Our western culture is so highly fragmented because our economic landscape requires it to be so. The appealing catchphrase “infrastructure of wellness” implies that there is (or should be) a dynamic delivery system supporting the attainment of well-being. Dr Coughlin and others focused on “longevity” always ask (appropriately) if we want to just live long or live well. It seems as though we will always fall short of this latter goal if we continue to commoditize and externalize our health and the attainment of wellness while still developing communities for cars and commerce rather than for people and relationships.
A Silver-Lining for “Senior” Living
There are literally hundreds of thousands of industry constituents focusing on the same problems. If we learn to share our language and outcomes, we will begin to close the gaps in our learning very quickly. Organizations like the MIT AgeLab offer the promise of integrative thinking fueled by collaboration – enhanced by the authority and influence they represent. If we don’t know who we are meeting on the sidewalk – there is something wrong with the city or town we are living in. This is our 20 foot problem! Living alone together breeds lost opportunities for truly redefining and redirecting the future of aging where we can live long AND well!.
It is not likely that conventional cities or towns can be repurposed overnight. Nonetheless, The Senior Living Industry is uniquely positioned to influence this change landscape – dismantling the senior silos of traditional real estate development and introducing planned communities that are more purposefully connected to the broader community. Thought leaders like Dr. Joseph Coughlin and his team remind us that the future has not yet been built. The infrastructure of wellness represents a future scenario that might organize itself with greater clarity of purpose with a shared vision.
Like most of you, we have attended a lot of conferences, workshops and seminars since entering the “Senior Living” sector. As repeat attendees of The Annual Memory Care Summit and representing a graduate of The Erickson School, we have one single expectation from the UMBC Aging brand and team – delivery of academic and person-centered content that can “excite and delight” business as usual. We use that phrase intentionally because our own team has just finished a group read (on Audible – our go to “employee training” app) of Joseph Coughlin’s “Longevity Economy.” Coughlin, introduces – among several other things – the concept of “transcendent” design where we focus on developing consumer products that will excite and delight all ages and not seniors alone. He encourages all of us to embrace what we would consider a “strengths-based” approach – where we design products for ability and inclusive opportunity rather than trying to solve problems that only highlight deficits in the targeted end-user. This kind of thinking should apply equally to our planned communities and programming.
“Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings”
–
Walt Disney
American entrepreneur,The Walt Disney Company
We are entering (or perhaps returning to) a new chapter in our Industry and culture where the curse of knowledge (in business and clinically) is being replaced by an emphasis on the fundamentals of imagination and relationship-building. What kind of future would we imagine, and then build, if we focused more exclusively on engaging across generations and sharing stories, experience and knowledge to that universal end?
Imagination vs Experience
If last year was about creating magical moments, and fine tuning company culture for sustained results, this year offered the charge to advance our Iconoclast Quotient (IQ) in recognition that while “Logic will take you from A to B, Imagination will take you anywhere.” Ideas and Interests are converging at an accelerated pace. If we want to offer health and wellness services to family, staff and residents, we will be required to meet our customers (all of them) wherever they are – and it will take the whole village to support their wants and needs effectively. In the past we have relied upon experience to light our path. In the immediate future we all need to be trailblazers of some degree.
Heroism and Incrementalism
In typical Erickson School fashion (this is the academic influence) a series of “pre-reading” materials were circulated via Dropbox to attendees – among these was a link from Bob Kramer of NIC to a recent New Yorker piece entitled “ The Heroism of Incremental Care” In the article, Atul Gawande shares an interesting metaphor surrounding the collapse of the Silver Bridge in 1967:
“The collapse signaled the need for a new strategy. Although much of the United States’ highway system was still relatively new, hundreds of bridges were more than forty years old and had been designed, like the Silver Bridge, for Model T traffic. Our system was entering middle age, and we didn’t have a plan for it.”
In this essay, emphasis was tied largely to the dichotomy of surgeons (heroes) and primary care physicians (incrementalists). For our purposes here, the relationship between outdated transportation infrastructure and our own bricks and mortar in Senior Living is key. We all know that we are developing products that are designed around realities/constraints and beliefs that are no longer relevant – like the Model T – and yet we still charge on without reconsidering the viability of our footings. It is worth emphasizing that EVERY time a guest speaker has joined the stage (we have been to four of the six events) they are emphatic about not wanting our “products or services.” We clearly need visionaries and iconoclasts to chart new courses for our Industry where we focus on engagement instead of behavior management alone.
5 Leadership Lessons from The Disney Institute
As leaders in the “Imagination” department, Mark Matheis offered the Disney Company’s’ perspective on how best to execute your plans once imagined:
Leaders establish, operationalize, and sustain the values and vision by which their organizations thrive.
Great leaders proactively establish values.
The more a vision can be expressed in a vivid, imaginative way, the more it will motivate people to action in the present.
Storytelling is an essential strategy for the communication of new ideas; people are more engaged and inspired by information presented through compelling narratives
The best legacy is not one that is fondly remembered, but one that is actively emulated
Value is created when Silos Break down
In “What the Smart Money Wants from You,” Robert Kramer, Founder & Strategic Advisor to The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, shared Industry Data and offered his own insight toward three drivers that are influencing our vision and narrative for the future:
The Longevity Revolution (Silver Tsunami)
Data, Robotics and Mass Customization
Healthcare Payment & Delivery Reform
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years…and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten”
–
Bill Gates
American business magnate,Microsoft Corporation
In his engaging presentation, Bob Kramer offered his invaluable insight (replete with data metrics of course!) into the future of aging, how it is being redefined by emerging trends and the anticipated impact of “new retirees”. The later will be represented by “transitions” to encore professions as opposed to traditional retirement. Bob’s own circumstances are illustrative of this occurrence. Having been recognized as the CEO leader breeding the remarkable success of NIC as the premier research, educational and data source for the Seniors Housing & Care Industry, Bob now transitions to Chief Strategist for NIC. Undoubtedly he, like numerous other industry veterans, including the likes of John Erickson and Dr, Judah Ronch representing the Summit, will continue to influence and shape the future of aging. These are not declinists but rather industry treasures to engage and leverage.
The Declinist view of Retirement where seniors unplugged to enjoy their golden years is clearly outdated (like the Silver Bridge) and being replaced by a new emphasis on engagement where residents will want to be become integrated with the communities they choose in an intentional and productive way. As the “diaspora” of healthcare continues and senior services become “uberized,” it will become increasingly difficult to compete with the demand for full service and retail “life management” solutions. Lifestyle coupled with the presence of supportive care proving more intergenerational and “connected” will give rise to the trends of desire trumping needs. Where will we plug in to the new value equation as developers, operators, caregivers? Imagine a future of aging where business constituents are more “collaborative” than “competitive”. These trends are the leading indicators of integrative thinking (points from Dr. Ronch) and more integrated business models that emulate the real world.
Imagine a Cure for Alzheimer’s, Then What?
Scott Townsley’s session was centered around the assumption of a cure for Alzheimer’s. Whether or not a cure is on a horizon, this kind of open-ended / creative thinking enables us to focus on the survivable (or missing) attributes of our business and its offerings. Ironically, these attributes or amenities might actually define our core because they are likely “transcendent.”
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole”
–
Theodore Levitt
American economist and professor ,Harvard Business School
The traps of quality and superiority were addressed where the former represents the sentiment that well established organizations don’t need to change (until it is too late) and the latter assumes that a premium offering will also maintain its hegemony – except that customers ultimately crave simpler, cheaper incumbents. The final ¼” drill trap presented echoed the detriments of Marketing Myopia where we forget that we are selling solutions not widgets. If we are struggling to identify our own value proposition as an organization, this exercise creates an opportunity to highlight (and work to close) the gap between what we think we are selling (i.e. memory care) and what the market wants to purchase for themselves or loved ones (valued relationships and engagement).
Awe – using art to create relationships
If you are not aware, The Erickson School strategically front-ends the program with business and academic content and reserves the final book-end for local guest speakers that can help to ground and synthesize our thinking (by tempering it) with the raw emotional reality of people and their own first-person caregiving stories. Just before these guests arrived, we were primed for the transition through Anne Basting and a re-telling of her incredible work. She relayed how her experience of introducing the transformational power of theatre to people with memory care issues enabled them to engage instead of being alone together.
“The arts are a way of being in relationship, of seeing and shaping the world. My work brings the tools of imagination and creative expression to care relationships and systems in order to foster healing through community building. We cannot heal without story”
–
Anne Bastings
Artist, Scholar, Teacher,UWM Center on Age & Community; Founder, TimeSlips
It should not be surprising that an entertainment giant like Disney would proffer the same insights garnered from improvisational arts. Storytelling creates a safe space for everyone through abstraction – when you create an open environment, expression naturally fills the vacuum. What does this look like in the built environment? Or is architecture just a shell if it is filled with genuinely human activities? In any case, the challenge is not just how do we create a better physical space for Memory Care but rather, how can we establish a broader network of engaging human activities? We need life centers where everyone can thrive.
Short Circuits
To echo Atul Gawande’s essay once more, “Our ability to use information to understand and reshape the future is accelerating in multiple ways.” He continues to describe that “we have at least four major data inputs that reflect our health and wellness over time, (1) information about the state of your internal systems (from your imaging and lab-test results, your genome sequencing); (2) the state of your living conditions (your housing, community, economic, and environmental circumstances); (3) the state of the care you receive (what your practitioners have done and how well they did it, what medications and other treatments they have provided); and (4) the state of your behaviors (your patterns of sleep, exercise, stress, eating, sexual activity, adherence to treatments).”
When you consider the scope of these inputs, it becomes clear that we will need more bandwidth to capture all of this data and make use of it in a meaningful way. It is unlikely that a sole “hero” provider will venture off into the forest and return with a miracle solution for Alzheimer’s or any other dis-ease. Of course, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, we might already be the miracle we are searching for.
“Remember, creative power will not operate itself. Knowing what to do is not enough. You, imagination’s operant power, must be willing to assume that things are as you desire them to be before they can ever come to pass.”
–
Neville Goddard
Author and Teacher
In this sixth year of the summit, we were all called to cultivate our iconoclastic quotient (IQ) so that the future we imagine is built on solid ground instead of crumbling foundations. We were also reminded that if engagement is the ultimate prescription, then we cannot succeed in isolation. Let’s take inventory of our respective strengths so that we can catalog and distribute the dimensional inputs of health and wellness together as due-diligence only. The shared moon-shot is to leverage the data and best practices to craft a new story about how we can age more actively and remain engaged together.
MeHI has been working closely with the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) and the Baker administration to advance the digital health ecosystem and explore how these new technologies can improve healthcare in the Commonwealth. Last week’s Reverse Pitch event was a first of its kind event for Aging 2.0 Boston. Under the leadership of Tim Driver, our chapter’s new Ambassador and 2017 Influencer in Aging, our planning committee sought to co-organize a uniquely themed event that might pave the way toward a protypical networking experience focused on casting a wide net and solving real world challenges.
What have we learned? Savvy business leaders are beginning to realize that much of the scaffolding for innovation has already been built by digital giants and the entrepreneurial community. Connectivity to these resources is lost absent more integrative thinking that rescues one from a siloed context. Mobile technologies in particular are seemingly ubiquitous and often designed for a broad array of user personas – not just boomers or seniors. There is an obvious silver lining here when we step outside of our aging services vertical – and allow ourselves to be informed by what we see in app stores, Kickstarter,Indiegogo and directories like Product Hunt. – we are reminded that many so-called industry-related problems are really just universal human problems in disguise. More importantly, many of these challenges are already being solved (or at least addressed) in adjacent spaces that are unencumbered by the concept of age cohorts.
How might we better connect the dots and foster more integrative solutions? Herein lies the opportunity contemplated by the Aging 2.0 Boston Reverse Pitch event where provider constituents in the field of Aging Services engaged in discussing how “new” repurposed tools and services might be responsive to distinct problems and challenges confronting the so-called Future of Aging. The Panel Participants were charged with identifying “passionate problems” in their own enterprise that are ripe for innovative solutions and offering them up to designers and entrepreneurs in the audience who might have an idea about how to accelerate a solution to market. Through the intersection of organizations like Aging 2.0, MeHI and Continuum Innovation, we now have a relatively captive audience for the most coveted resources of (1) designers that can create and/or reimagine tools, and (2) providers representing users that can test them.
The Reverse Pitches
The following presents “Passionate Problem” statements shared by each of the Provider panelists:
“We want to create an interactive dashboard to look at the whole person’s needs (financial, legal, housing, health) that they or we could tweak or update as their situation changes.”
“People with dementia often don’t have the ability to communicate their physical and emotional needs. What if there were a way to make family and professional caregivers aware of those needs as they were happening?”
“We need technology that will liberate our workforce from managing information and deliver real time wearable data on a resident’s preferences, conditions and care plans as soon as they enter the resident’s home.”
Where do we go from here?
While topics of discussion were diverse, two broad elements of commonality seemed to emerge to constitute a “theme” of the event – or at least the “takeaway” challenge. First, connectivity inasmuch as technology is breeding a smaller world with real time access to one another and critical information. Second, the growing need for personalization of technologies that can be customized to individual needs and preferences. In the realm of Aging Services, opportunities abound where connectivity coupled with personalization will breed valued technology solutions. Beyond healthcare providers, primary family caregivers require better information access to monitor the well-being and needs of their loved ones – and to guide their own sense of oversight and intervention. As Christoper Sintros noted in his remarks, “we need to learn how to better leverage technology so that our cargivers are 100% focused on caregiving.” He added parenthetically that “our frontline caregivers – our front-line staff – have not benefitted from technology.”
In spite of all the accelerator groups that have emerged and are multiplying – and the c-suites that proudly wave the banner of innovation – our collective efforts are still somehow off the mark. In order to truly Change Aging, we should focus on the simple things first. The future is already here as they say – it is just not evenly distributed! Of course, we are not suggesting that all of the solutions we are seeking exist already or that they are in a turn-key state. Rather, our insight is just that there are so many parrallel activities present that our key actionable attention should be laser-focused on (1) awareness of what has been done already and (2) the desire to connect with the right people. We are all standing on the shoulders of giant. It would be a critical mistep to move forward in in our care business with blinders on.
Here is one example lead…
Sentio Solutions has created Feel, the first wristband to monitor emotional wellness, track feelings and manage stress. The integrated wristband sensors measure and track biosignals throughout the day, including galvanic skin response, blood volume pulse and skin temperature, to show individuals how their mood is affected by factors such as activity, the people they meet and environmental conditions. Through Bluetooth enabled communication, the Feel app visualizes the results and provides personalized recommendations to improve emotional health. Co-founded by George Eleftheriou and Haris Tsirbas, Feel is helping individuals manage their emotional health and improve their overall well-being. For more information visit www.myfeel.co.
Sentio Solutions has created Feel, the first wristband to monitor emotional wellness, track feelings and manage stress. The integrated wristband sensors measure and track biosignals throughout the day, including galvanic skin response, blood volume pulse and skin temperature, to show individuals how their mood is affected by factors such as activity, the people they meet and environmental conditions.
Lets try to connect people, products and organizations actively together
This is an unprecedented time in our history because we are now often able to use the metaphor of an existing tool to describe modest innovations that established organizations are seeking. For example, in Veronica Barner’s pitch she expanded upon her problem statement by describing how caregivers could benefit from a Fitbit or Apple Watch type of device adapted to monitor mood variations and detecting the onset of depression or other behavioral indicators. Does the feel wearable represent a possible outlet for this problem/opportunity? You never now what the outcome of a chance encounter might be. Why not leverage our collective knowledge to broker these interactions?
Undoubtedly there are people and products waiting for a connection…
Please share any ideas that you have in the form below. People, Products, SDKs – all shareable information has potential value. We will make sure you get connected and follow-up with you.
As technologies evolve, an emerging challenge is to source solutions that promote better aggregation of intelligence and eliminate redundancies of data collection and monitoring. Single source outlets are required that meet the customized needs and expectations of all constituents. Technologies need to be more fully integrated to provide real-time awareness of circumstances – providing timely detection of individual needs and preferences. Consequently, all constituents are aligned and informed such that healthcare providers and allied advocates present a seamless consortium of resources to foster the optimal support system for wellness and care.
Thanks to our Sponsors
We are proud to support and participate on the planning committee for the Local Boston Chapter of Aging 2.0. Events like these would not be possible without the support of our corporate sponsors. Thank you for your valued and recurring participation!
BOSTON – Local startups, Industry Professionals and Aging Services supporters converged last Thursday evening at the Boston office of Nixon Peabody. The focus of the event was to select winners from a series of 4 minute pitches that would go on to represent Boston in the 2017 Global Startup Search (GSS).
Capital Care Associates, LLC (CCA) was proud to be actively engaged in the planning and execution of the Boston Chapter Event while sourcing and securing event sponsors. Nearly twenty corporate sponsors representing a wide range of senior healthcare providers and service professionals participated in the program. “While emerging technologies prove disruptive to the future of aging, these new entrepreneurs amplify the opportunities represented by innovations surrounding person-centered care and quality outcomes.” cites Joe McCarron, Principal of CCA.
Allen Lynch, who hosted the event at his firm’s office, observed that, “the common denominator among the (participating) entrepreneurs was not just a passion for their product, but an often deeply personal reason for wanting to improve the lives of seniors.” Continued active support for the Boston Chapter from the existing professional and emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems prove that we are all invested in changing the way we age and how health care and wellness services are delivered in our homes and communities-at-large. Local events like these offer further proof that “Providers and ‘Enablers’ should come together in Senior Living.”
About GSS
The Aging2.0 Global Startup Search is an annual program designed to search the world for the best aging-focused startups. The competition kicks off with a series of pitch events in Chapter cities around the world – hundreds of startups apply to compete and local teams carefully select participants and judges for each event. The winning startup from each local pitch event moves forward to an online voting round, where the general public and panel of expert judges evaluate and contribute to the selection of finalists.
The final pitch event will take place during the Aging2.0 OPTIMIZE Conference in San Francisco November 14-15, 2017. This program is supported by Google for Entrepreneurs.
Local Chapter Updates
In his opening remarks, Tom Grape, Chairman and CEO of Benchmark Senior Living relayed to newcomers that the Boston Chapter is an arm of the global Aging2.0 organization, and that “our mission is to accelerate innovation to improve the lives of older adults here in Boston and around the world”.
Tom, who has served as the Ambassador of the Boston Chapter since it was established in 2015 introduced a new Chapter Ambassador, Tim Driver to attendees. Tim founded his company Mature Caregivers in 2006 with the aim of helping families to get better in-home care for their loved ones and to help people over 50 to find jobs that they love. It is a sister business to RetirementJobs.com, that administers the ‘Certified Age Friendly Employer‘ program, recognized by AARP and Consumer Reports, and the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging.
Seven Pitches representing Boston
In preparing for this year’s event, the volunteer planning committee was charged with vetting applicants. The following seven were chosen to represent the City of Boston and surrounding New England cities and towns:
LifeJourney Books – LifeJourney Books’ innovative and simple-to-navigate system rescues and preserves each Lifestory, an engaging and enjoyable process which strengthens generational bonds, and creates a Lasting Legacy.
Nebula Industries – Nebula Industries is solving the problem of medical adhesive related injuries for those with fragile skin, particularly older people, using innovative approaches developed at MIT/Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Senter – Senter combines the latest IoT & AI technologies with a heavy focus on thoughtful user experience to make the home healthier and safer for aging individuals.
CareNav – CareNav is a digital health solution offering patient navigation services. Their scalable platform matches patients with experienced nurses for 1:1 virtual consultations, pre and post doctor’s visit, to empower and facilitate their healthcare experience.
BeON – BeON Home light bulb system senses the health and safety of your loved ones without compromising their dignity.
GreyMatters – GreyMatters is an interactive life storybook app for the tablet that aims to improve quality of life for people with dementia and their caregivers.
SilverBills – Using technology, we receive, scrutinize and ensure that our clients’ bills are paid accurately and on-time. Our clients no longer need to write checks or remember due dates.
The pitch event was emceed by Alice Bonner, Secretary of the Executive Office of Elder Affairs in the Commonwealth and the following industry experts served as the Judging panel:
SAN DIEGO – In Messaging New Directions we relayed the general theme for the NIC 2016 National conference – that cost, value and messaging need data, analysis and connections if a clear narrative is to emerge for Senior Living. As expected, there was a newly crafted narrative shared at this year’s NIC 2017 Spring Forum and it was informed by the confluence of data, analysis and some new connections. NIC engaged Anne Tumlinson to research the Board inspired thesis of creating value by intentionally coordinating bricks and mortar with emerging soft resources coined as “Enablers.” These findings became the framework for the NIC 2017 Spring Forum entitled “Unlocking New Value Through Senior Care Collaboration.”
Innovating Senior Care
The following NIC webinar provides a comprehensive introduction to many of the talking points that were expanded upon at the NIC Spring Conference:
Of note, Bob Kramer, CEO of NIC summarizes that, “Healthcare providers and payers are beginning to realize that if you are serious about delivering better health outcomes and controlling costs, housing as well as socialization matters, and in fact, without them you won’t achieve good outcomes.” There is a symbiotic opportunity represented by coupling asset-based providers with the care capabilities of so-called “enablers” and the captive customers they already represent – and can share strategically – in order to scale together. Kramer noted a remark from CEO of Kaiser, Bernard Tyson at the J.P. Morgan healthcare conference, that “40% of an individual’s health is driven by personal behaviors outside of the healthcare environment”. Recognizing the influence that non-real estate based providers of technology and services will have on the Senior Living sector is the first step toward breaking down silos of care.
Enabling by Example
Kelsey Mellard represented Honor at the event where they were the unofficial poster children for the disruptive (enabling) innovation our industry is being charged to embrace. Co-founder Sandy Jen’s brief TEDMED talk below captures their view on the impact non-medical caregiving can have on the cost and value of healthcare:
Jen describes how “unskilled home-care has always orbited outside of the traditional healthcare system of nurses doctors and hospitals and more and more, people are realizing that the home part of hospital to home is crucial.” She adds that it (home-care) can (1) reduce readmission rates, (2) increase quality of life for patients after discharge and (3) reduce the cost of provider health care to an aging population estimated to reach 84 million by 2050. In a recent Argentum post titled, “7 Innovations Changing the Aging Experience” Aging 2.0 Co-founder Stephen Johnston relayed that, “Emerging technologies have the potential to disrupt the senior healthcare market and thereby nudge service providers to improve their offerings.” If advice from NIC and their expert panels take root, it is likely that we will start to see a groundswell in active partnerships and collaborations.
The New World of Senior Care Collaboration
The Value Based Care (VBC) Revolution
The shift from volume to value in Post-Acute Care (PAC) is not going to be possible outside the broader framework that is mandating a transition from treatment of sickness to promotion of health. It is no longer sufficient to care for someone only when they are under your roof! When you recognize this, it becomes clear why an active focus on population health and wellness is critical. As tools and services that exist in the community become more sophisticated (and even ubiquitous) to consumers of all ages, it is imperative that senior living providers not fall behind. In the Forum’s opening session, leadership from Jupiter Communities, naviHEALTH and Optum relayed the following three key takeaways for success in seniors housing:
Provide evidence-based care and show strong outcomes
Educate both payers and traditional clinical providers that they (you) are a meaningful part of the solution
Collaborate rather than compete with other providers
Referring to the “right” PAC setting will be a critical strategy for VBC since “43% of Medicare patients utilize post-acute care after discharge and there is wide variation in costs across each setting.” As stated previously, 84 million people will be 65 years old or older in the United States alone by 2050. Beth Mace, NIC Chief Economist and Director of Outreach, contextualizes that datapoint further by reminding us that today’s 82 year old resident was born in 1934 and is part of the Silent Generation. With all of the age wave and silver tsunami buzz continuing over the past few years, we are still years shy of the crest that boomers will represent for providers of housing, care and tech-enabled services. Now is the time to begin preparing for that certain demographic future.
Tweeting advice to the Industry
Thursday’s luncheon featured a panel discussion with Senators Tom Daschle and Bill Frist, M.D.
As the clip above reflects, we need to engage in a more active national conversation about our social contracts and the role our government should play in health care. Interestingly, Sen Bill Frist made multiple passive references to the role quality food and nutrition has to play in improving health and reducing the cost of care. Did anyone else hear this? Or was it just wishful thinking on our part? If we want to prove that we believe in breaking down silos, we might consider a 2018 NIC Spring Forum focused on the economic development and health impacts of advancing and deploying local food systems!
Takeaway from a Taxi ride…
Providence offered a clear metaphor for reinforcing the value of collaboration in the experience of my brief taxi ride to the San Diego International Airport. As I stepped onto the Bayfront Hotel porte cochere, I could see that there was a single taxi waiting. The attendant escorted a woman into the back seat and then quickly turned to me and summoned the next car in line. Asking if I was headed to the airport, I confirmed that we both were. Our two, four-door, five passenger taxi sedans began to travel down Harbor Drive on parallel tracks together yet alone. We arrived at the same gate, at the same time, and we both presumably paid the same twenty-dollar fare.
The over-consumption model that this story captures mirrors many of our contemporary business relationships and transactions. In this example, some outreach and collaboration would have created immediate value for the two of us. Moreover, who knows what we might have discussed and explored through the connection of common interests. Do we really choose to consume alone or have we been artfully conditioned to relinquish our collective buying power? We should not consider ourselves to be victims of a broken system – we are active players that can influence the rules of the game.
Interestingly, our industry predicament seemingly proves a microcosm of our world at large. Our communities, industries and nations need to honor a simpler mandate – we must always demand and promote more collective EFFICIENCY every-where and for every-one. These are habits that must be formed and refined if they are to take up permanent residence in our collective psyche. If we identify and optimize what is wrong in these daily details, the broader canvas just might correct itself. There is a clear opportunity attendant to the messages that NIC and others are developing for us. The challenge is to expand the scope of our inquiry and recognize through our actions not just that silos represent lost opportunities for added value creation – but that all of our silos are nested one inside of the other. When we celebrate acceptance of an expanded and more inclusive perspective, we must remind ourselves that their is an ever-widening circle to be informed by. As in our own business practice, “Combining Capital with Care” seems like the formulary for success.
