Healthcare Gathering Addresses Increasing Need of Caring for the Nation's Elderly...

Healthcare Gathering Addresses Increasing Need of Caring for the Nation's
Elderly Population

LOS ANGELES, April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- In direct response to America's aging
population and the acknowledged gaps in geriatric care, healthcare
professionals recently gathered in Los Angeles to find creative approaches to
address one of the nation's most pressing healthcare needs - caring for a
society where in two decades one of every five American's will be 65 or older.

"Our goal is to make quality care for the elderly more efficient and less
costly," said Dan Osterweil, M.D., convener of the Leadership and Management
in Geriatrics (LMG) Conference. "To do that, healthcare professionals need to
hone their leadership and management skills."

According to Dr. Osterweil, there currently exists "a serious gap" in the
professional development of physicians, nurses and allied health professionals
who work in clinical and academic settings related to geriatric care. "This
conference helps bridge that gap by encouraging intense interaction between
clinicians and leaders in the field of geriatric medical management," he says.
"Together we embrace novel approaches to creating and managing the kind of
geriatric clinics, practices and services our society desperately needs."

The two-day LMG Conference is presented by the nonprofit SCAN Health Plan in
collaboration with the UCLA Academic Geriatric Resource Center and the
California Geriatric Education Center. Now in its seventh year, the conference
is held in a retreat-like setting with a low participant-to-faculty ratio. To
date, 157 participants from 19 states have attended the program.

One of the topics covered at this year's conference was the growing demand
for, and challenges associated with, providing long-term care as America ages.
Attendees helped develop strategies for effective long-term care practices and
identified quality indicators for institutional and community long-term care
services.

Unique to LMG, conference participants are asked pre-conference to identify a
worksite-specific management or leadership issue they wish to address. At the
workshop, they have the opportunity to work in small collaborative groups with
a faculty member to develop an action plan that directly addresses the
challenge they laid out. They then work with a mentor post-conference to
implement their action plan and apply lessons learned. This provides the
ability to truly track the program's impact over time and makes the conference
more than simply a two-day experience.

"Participants leave the conference with the ability to apply leadership and
management skills to the practice of geriatric medicine," said Dr. Osterweil.
"This can include how to tap into Web-based technologies for collaborative
problem solving, how to interpret basic financial reports, and how to
transition into a leadership role. This is real-world knowledge they need to
succeed both in their practice and in better serving their patients."

As a health plan dedicated exclusively to seniors and others on Medicare,
SCAN's sponsorship of the conference is part of its ongoing commitment to
better understand the aging process and advocate on behalf of the needs of
seniors. All of SCAN's medical directors have attended this program, and its
CEO David Schmidt has participated as a faculty member.

For more than 30 years, SCAN Health Plan has been focusing on the unique needs
of people with Medicare and today is the fourth-largest nonprofit Medicare
Advantage Plan in the United States. The company currently serves 110,000
members in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura
and Kern counties. In Arizona, SCAN offers a Medicare Advantage Plan in
Maricopa County and provides long-term care services to individuals in that
county who are enrolled in the state's long-term care system. Further
information may be obtained at scanhealthplan.com.

SOURCE SCAN Health Plan

Ross Goldberg, +1-818-597-8453, ext. 1, for SCAN Health Plan