Living Longer, Living Well
The growth in the number and proportion of older adults
is unprecedented in the history of the United States. In
fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
estimates that over the next 25 years, two factors—longer
life spans and aging baby boomers—will combine to
double the population of Americans aged 65 years or
older to about 72 million.
With the health needs of our older community members
in mind, Lakeland has formed the Senior Services
Consortium. This group brings together leaders from
a number of different entities that serve older patients
in southwest Michigan, including hospitals, nursing
homes, homecare services, assisted living facilities, and
retirement communities. The group’s objective is to keep
seniors healthy, so that they can enjoy the best possible
quality of life. Lakeland has made strides toward this
goal by educating staff at participating facilities about
management and prevention of congestive heart failure
and other medical conditions. We believe that by sharing
this knowledge, we are investing in the health of our
entire community.
We also realize that as patients age, it’s more important
than ever for their entire care team—primary care
physicians, specialists, and other providers—to work
together to provide consistent, coordinated care. The
consortium has made that possible by giving providers
secure access to view their patients’ electronic medical
records. For patients, this means that their entire care
team can collaborate more quickly and effectively,
whether they are at their doctor’s office, in the emergency
room, at a long-term care facility, or anywhere else.
It’s easy to look at other organizations in your industry
as competitors, but the Senior Services Consortium is all
about seeing them as collaborators. Today, anyone can
view quality ratings for nursing homes online to see who
is doing well in which areas, and who could use some
improvement. In the spirit of collaboration, we want to
look at these scores and find opportunities to help one
another learn and improve, at our own facilities and
everywhere else. It’s the right thing to do for our patients
and our community. To learn more about this group,
please visit www.lakelandhealth.org/seniors.
