We have switched the Waldorf/Washing DC conferences.  The Washington DC conference will be the first conference.  It will be on Saturday, September 9th.  The Waldorf conference will be on Sunday, September 10th.

Joe was great and his participation really made these conferences an Event.  Carol Benner, consultant to our QIO was also terrific with an overview of the beginnigs of a few projects around Maryland.  Sandee, Family Council leader and our discussion facilitator gave each attendee an opportunity to discuss and process the information from the morning sessions.

With this regional setting, the conferences were both small enough to give all attendees a more intimate contact with presenters and concepts.  There was plenty of time for one-on-one questions, observations, and comments.  

From the feed-back both on the Reflections sheets and from emails I've received from attendees, I can say that while we did not have large numbers attending, we definitely planted some vibrant seeds in very fertile ground.  As a first step, this seems to be succeeding well.

We'll see what the next set of conferences brings.

We are now preparing for the Columbia conference which is double the size of the previous conferences (80 maximum attendees instead of the 40 planned for at the other conferences).  We are not only "sold out" on this one but we are overbooked with 84 registrants.

Karen Schoeneman of CMS will speak at this one as the keynote speaker.  We've added a few things to the program such as Carol Benner's "unscientific scientific study" which somewhat tracks changes in attitudes toward what consititutes Quality as our conference attendees hear our presentations.  Since we are doing so many of these, we've had the opportunity to fine-tune the program 'tweaking' the presentations to eliminate duplications and to tightening up a few slow spots.  

All in all, this part of the project is going very well.  Once the Columbia conference is over, we'll have a break.  The last two conferences, scheduled for mid-November, will complete Phase iIof the Project.  

We are now starting to really look at Phase II of the Project.   This Phase asks for 5 nursing homes with family councils to plan a culture change project with the family council as an equal player in the development and implementation of the project . It also asks them to share information on how that collaboration worked with each other as the projects progress and with the entire long-term care community once the projects are completed.

So far, we have 0 nursing homes on the list to participate although we have several that are interested.