Dan Osterweil, MD, CMD, FACP | CALTCM President

Dear friends,
Another year has winded down and it is time to report back to you all on the status of our organization. I want also to make a point why now more than ever it is very important to belong to the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.

First, the status of the organization; we are 370 members strong, the only multidisciplinary organization of health professionals dedicated to long-term care medicine. This is more than a 100 percent growth! We are undergoing an administrative reorganization that will make us stronger and more self-sustaining in the future. I would like take this opportunity to thank the staff of the California Geriatric Education Center for all their hard work helping us build our organizational capacity.

We have forged strong alliances with the California Association of Healthcare Facilities (CAHF), California Department of Public Health (CDPH), Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG), and other stakeholder organizations dedicated to Quality Improvement and Performance Improvement Education. We have jointly tackled some regulatory challenges related to use of antipsychotic medications suggesting solutions which are consistent with best practices and make regulatory sense. CDPH has taken our recommendations under advisement.

The 37th annual symposia in July 2011 focused on implementation of best practices on Depression, Dementia and Diabetes Mellitus. A collaborative program with the California Geriatric Education Center (CGEC) at UCLA on management of depression in the nursing home and beyond is underway. Five facilities were selected to participate in an implementation and quality improvement process associated with depression management. Those facilities will be receiving technical assistance (TA) from experts that will include additional training of teams in best practice and quality improvement related to depression, approaches applicable to other care processes in the Nursing Home. Thanks to assistance and collaboration with SCAN health plan, all the lectures as well as case studies related to depression will be available online for teams and individuals who could not attend the Symposium in July. These will be augmented with webinars and coaching sessions to help NHs implement best practices. The content in the depression and dementia care training we had is directly related to CDPH efforts to introduce best practices related to use of antipsychotic medications.

The California Collaborative on Quality Improvement, a stakeholders group set to advise us on planning the next steps of Performance Improvement Education  [PIE] has met several times this year and created a work plan for implementation of InterAct II in California, to help reduce unnecessary rehospitalizations of nursing home residents. The next step will consist of 2 statewide team-training sessions in conjunction with the upcoming CAHF conferences on Quality Improvement planned for 2012 in Northern and Southern California.

We have agreed to work with CDPH on the revision and update of Title 22, a task that is supposed to to update regulations consistent with the progress made in science and care delivery processes.

So when I ask myself, "Why am I a member of this organization?" The answers are clear:

CALTCM is the premier interdisciplinary organization for Long Term Care health care professionals that provides practical and implementation-oriented training to improve professional competency and performance

• Being a CALTCM member means being part of a network sharing mutual goals on how to do a better job taking care of our patients with chronic illnesses.
• Being a CALTCM member is being part of a community that can be relied upon for advice and support.
• Being a CALTCM member means having access to the knowledge of state-of-the-art chronic disease management.
• Being a CALTCM member means having the skills to practice medicine confidently in a complex and regulated environment.
• Being a CALTCM member means knowing the standards of practice, thereby minimizing liability exposure.
• Being a CALTCM member means saving hundreds of dollars in CME/CEU costs.
• Being a CALTCM member medical director means having the opportunity to acquire the credits toward CMD certification from AMDA right here at home, in California.
• Being a CALTCM member medical director means I bring extra value to the homes I work with, thus improving its overall performance and quality of care.
• Being a CALTCM member medical director means I bring extra value to the homes I work with, thus commanding a more competitive remuneration while improving their overall performance and quality of care.