The NBC Nightly News "Trading Places" series continues this week. They are sharing stories from viewers and exploring elder care issues in more depth.

On Monday night they ran a wonderful story about Rakhma Homes in Minnesota. Several Pioneer Network board members and staff visited Rakhma while in Minnesota a few weeks ago for a board meeting (thanks to the Minnesota Health & Housing Alliance for helping to arrange the visit).

The piece about Rakhma ended with a comment that residents are "not in a home, they are at home." It would be great if NBC were to explore that concept more and show how a small but growing number of nursing homes are doing truly remarkable work individualizing care and de-institutionalizing services -- and also share how some nursing homes with more resources are transforming themselves into households and neighborhoods.

It's really important to raise awareness about nursing home alternatives as that will spur innovation in all areas. But we can't lose sight of the fact that we have 15,000+ nursing homes and approaching this as a zero sum game (home & community-based care VS. nursing home care) is not useful. In many communities, the nursing homes that are undergoing a transformation represent an incredible resource for educating the broader community about the need to invest in a direct care workforce, one that can serve individuals with chronic care needs across the long-term care spectrum. Think of what the Green Houses are doing in the communities where they're being built -- they are nursing homes undergoing a deep transformation, and there are many other nursing homes adopting other approaches to creating households (for example, over 200 Household Matters Toolkits have been distributed). The stories of those organizations deserve to be heard too.

Last night's program featured Dr. Marie Bernard, The Donald W. Reynolds Chair in Geriatric Medicine at the University of Oklahoma. You can read her blog here.