by Mira Cantrell, MD

First of all, I would like to thank all two hundred CALTCM members who took time out of their busy schedules to attend the 38th Annual CALTCM conference held May 11 and 12 at the Omni Hotel in Los Angeles. I greatly appreciate your attendance, interest, active participation and your feedback that made the conference a success and will help us plan our future conferences. It also gives me a great pleasure to thank all members of the CALTCM Education Committee and our administrative staff for their hard work, enthusiasm and resourcefulness in organizing and executing this year’s conference.

By all accounts, the conference was very successful. The attendees appreciated the presentation of the most up-to-date topics, the format and the pace of the conference, and, most importantly, they told us that the topics had great relevance for their daily practice.  The poster session was received with great interest as well and it was a wonderful forum for the exchange of thoughts and ideas.

Electrified by the enthusiastic reviews of the attendees, the Education Committee members met immediately following the closing of the conference and started discussing topics for next year’s conference. As always, we want the annual conference to have a meaningful impact on the practice of long-term care, helping practitioners and institutions improve patients’ care and safety, improve outcomes and help in reducing the legislative burden. With all that in mind, the committee zeroed in on the following topics as potential focus areas for the next year’s conference:

• Care Transition
• Communication
• Palliative care, advance care planning
• “Hot topics” – current  and critical issues
• Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement (QAPI)

While the conference program is developed based largely on conference participants’ comments and feedback, we welcome and appreciate an ongoing dialog with all CALTCM members. We appreciate everybody’s suggestions and recommendations to help us organize another dynamic  and highly relevant meeting. All members are invited to contact us with their thoughts and ideas and each one will be given our time and consideration.

Once again, thank you all for attending.  I hope next year’s conference, on April 26 & 27, 2013 at the Omni in Los Angeles, will draw even more participants.  I also hope our annual conferences will become a tradition for everyone in the California long-term care community where, beside learning, old friends meet and new friendships are created!

Mira Cantrell, MD
Education Chair