Program Overview:

The Rocky Mountain Geriatric Conference is produced by the Division of Geriatrics, University of Utah School of Medicine, in affiliation the VA Salt Lake Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center (GRECC).  Each year this nationally attended conference features a different geriatric topic to explore in depth. This year's theme focuses on successful navigation of long-term care services for older adults.

Conference Focus:

"Please stop sending me somewhere else to solve the problem". Have you ever heard this expressed by a patient or caregiver? Every day, 10,000 Americans turn 65 years old. Two-thirds of them will need long-term care at some point in their lives. How will their needs be met? Post-acute care, nursing homes, or other institutional settings, are only a part of the picture. Surveys show the majority of individuals want to stay in their homes or within their communities. Fragmentation of care can be confusing and stressful for families and caregivers.

The focus of our conference is to educate multidisciplinary attendees about the need to develop a longitudinally shared patient centered care plan, including appropriate strategies for post-acute care, skilled nursing facilities, and discharge planning, while meeting the needs of educating and supporting families and caregivers. Discussions will address navigating the components of Long-Term Services and Support (LTSS), matching needs to resources, costs of care and financial resources, flow of communication, innovative models/strategies of care and tools available to meet those challenges, and to offer an opportunity for attendees to envision and strategize solutions for their local communities.

Target Audience: 

Content for this conference is appropriate for all professionals who care for older adults. We welcome physicians, social workers, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists and chaplains. We also welcome health care policymakers, hospital and skilled nursing home administrators, community care coordinators and others interested in LTSS.

Program Objectives:

By the conclusion of the conference participants should be able to:

1. Identify best practices in transitional care.
2. Integrate transitional care models into current medical home models.
3. Apply transitional care insights to the long-term care setting.
4. Demonstrate approaches to assess risk for hospital, emergency department and nursing home readmission.
5. Enhance skills to improve patient and family engagement in care coordination during transitions.