The catastrophic deaths of nursing home residents and staff were the result of a failed long-term care system.
The Live Oak Project responded by creating a movement to Reimagine, Redesign, and Transform all aspects of policy and practice in the delivery of service and support for elders and people living with disabilities.
7 pillars provide the foundation for the Live Oak Project
The system of support, services and care for elders and people with disabilities is one whole integrated, interactive system in which actions, or failure to act, in one part of the system will have consequences in other parts.
The culture of the system is grounded in empowering communities that support each person’s autonomy. It assists each person to achieve their individual goals as well as a meaningful life physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and socially and is appropriate to the cultural and religious needs of each individual.
Each person providing support, services and care, whether a direct caregiver or a licensed professional, shall have pay equity with those providing similar services in the highest paid settings.
Short-term or long-term care settings shall be a home designed to be accessible with private rooms, private bathrooms, natural and good lighting and plenty of common space, good air circulation, and access to outdoors.
The system of regulation shall be based in collaboration and learning, fostering innovation, and support those providers who engage in and sustain quality person-directed care. At the same time, the regulatory system shall enforce meaningful consequences for chronic poor performers.
Medicaid, Medicare, and third-party payers need to be transformed so that individuals and families do not need to become impoverished to qualify for care, and providers are reimbursed properly for reasonable costs of person-directed care.
Through tax incentives, direct reimbursement, legislation and other means, federal and state governments shall financially support new and adapted models of care such as small houses and households, and innovative community services, subscribing to the full realization of these Pillars of Transformation.
McKnight’s Long-Term Care News
We’d like a do-over, please
If there was a way to go back to 1965 and have a do-over on nursing home design in America, we would not create or accept institutional architecture, the chronic under-reimbursement and dysfunctional regulatory system that are hallmarks of our current reality. We suspect most stakeholders feel the same way. (READ MORE)
It is important that consumers are active advocates for improved care and know that change is possible. Knowledge that there are new approaches to care and asking for it helps create the change we all want.
