NCAL Day 2017 brought into focus a consistent theme of quality of life for residents and staff of assisted living communities, according to VCAL Director April Payne who attended the 11^th annual event as part of the 2017 AHCA/NCAL Convention in Las Vegas in October.  The day started with Rishi Manchanda, physician and public health innovator, who talked about the shift to finding the root causes of illness rather than simply treating the symptoms, which he dubs the “upstream effect.”  He encouraged health care practitioners and organizations to consider the social and environmental sources of our health problems – the places we live, work, eat, and play – to develop an “upstreamist” mindset to deliver more effective and comprehensive healthcare.

Throughout the remainder of the day the theme was carried through with discussions on Living Well, Dying Well – an approach of opening lines of communication beyond health care directives and Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) forms to focus on resident-centered decision-making about end-of-life care.  The following session included an engaging presentation on a new methodology of empowering long term care communities to focus on caregivers through a “bottom up, top enabled” process to build a culture of improvement that results in improved safety, experience, and efficiency of long-term care delivery.  Attendees then took an in depth look at the impacts of dementia on quality of life by focusing on the individual and their unique needs, rather than the disease to decrease the rate of misdiagnosis, under/over treatment, and rejection.

To wrap up the incredibly informative day and bridge all of the topics together, a diverse panel of senior living providers discussed trends and advancements in senior care focusing on clinical, quality, dementia, and workforce.