From HLTH 2024: Innovating Customer Experiences in Senior Care - Elizabeth Jensen, PhD, MSN, RN-BC

We are here live from HLTH 2024. This is The Glow Up: Fabulous conversations with innovative minds. I have a very innovative nursing mind here with me today. Can you please, introduce yourself to the Glow Up audience and tell me a little bit about what you're doing in, nursing and innovation here at HLTH

hi, Nathan. Thank you so much for having me today.

It's good to see you.

My name is Liz Jensen and I am the Clinical Director at the Direct Supply Innovation and Technology Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We are situated on the campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering. We have a beautiful renovated innovation center that was originally built in 1890 that we're, operating out of. My work as a nurse, has taken me on a journey. Through the healthcare spectrum, over the last 34 years, I've been a nurse for 34 years.

Amazing, congratulations.

Thank you. I started my nursing career in the acute care space, but quickly learned and discovered that I loved working with older adults, and I loved working with nurses and nursing assistants. the perfect place to find that combination is in long term care. most of my nursing career prior to joining the Innovation Center was spent leading and managing, nurses and nursing assistants, in nursing homes and assisted living communities. Currently, I am working with technology developers and, startup companies that are looking to innovate, and help solve problems in nursing homes assisted living communities. And I bring a nurse's voice to that work.

So you brought up a couple of topics that I don't typically put together. I'm a little bit of a newbie in the health tech space. and I, but I have worked in the innovation space and the idea of innovation in longterm care, but aren't always. where people think about either of those things. can you tell me about, what innovation for long term care looks like? And, a little bit about the problem space that you're working on now at the Center?

Of course. And it is such an important space, and I'll tell you why. In 2022, the U. S. Census data showed that for every person over the age of 85, we had 35 people in the workforce, right? By 2060, which is when I'll be 85, that ratio will shrink to 12 to 1. We'll only have 12 people in the workforce for every person over the age of 85, meaning we have way more older people In the United States that need care and fewer and fewer people to help provide that care. And so, in, when we think about where people will be receiving care, most people will want to stay home, right? But what is home? And how do we define home? And will we be able to live by ourselves at home? more and more people are finding that congregate care, meaning I live in an apartment building or a place where I can get services of you know, assisted living services or if I need more intense care I can get it in a nursing home. Those buildings will become more and more important to us as a society and as people as we look for places where we can live and receive the care and services that we need.

That's such a astounding shift and with, you know, life expectancies with all of these, great cancer treating technologies with what we're able to do with gene therapies, life expectancy is growing, and I suspect that may not even be, calculated into some of those dramatic numbers that you're sharing. Can you talk about, the specifics of a project that you've worked on and how you've worked with these different providers, innovators, to be that voice of a nurse in that skilled setting?

Absolutely. When I started my work, at the Innovation Center at Direct Supply one area that I discovered is that the opportunities for nurses to actually contribute their voices to technology development were very slim. You know, as a nurse, how do you get your voice heard? Where do you go? How do you contribute? Where does that happen? If you want to step up, how do you do it? And especially outside of the acute care space. And so I started a group called the Spark Collective that brings nurses together, nursing leaders from the long term care and assisted living space. And we match them with our technology developers, we, put them together with startup companies that are looking for the voice of nurses so that they can understand the problems and the situations that these nurse executives are facing every day. And that led me actually to, go back to school and I got my PhD in leadership and my focus for my research was. elevating the voice of nurse executives in long term care. When you look at the literature, on nurse executives, much of the nurses represented in the literature are working in the acute care space, or for large health systems. And what we understand and know about nursing and nursing leadership in the post acute long term care space is very little. I wanted to elevate the voices of those nurses and give them the opportunity to contribute their perspectives and their very unique viewpoints into how care has to be delivered in these settings, which are not well funded and have a very difficult regulatory burden that they're operating under. with, you know, limited resources to do so. So, that work with the Spark Collective has really, helped some startups really get some great traction. There's a startup that I like to talk about a lot called SafelyU, out of California. And SafelyU provides, AI based camera technology, along with a service of clinical support to help, memory care, dementia care centers do a better job of caring for people that are at super high risk for falls.

Amazing. So, not so much about, like, putting technology into the hands of, these seniors, but about, Finding ways to engage nurses when the moment is right, when attention is so spread thin, to be able to highlight and bring attention to those things that really matter at the right time.

Yeah, absolutely Nathan. You know, the opportunity to hear about the challenges of delivering care, delivering nursing care and services. There was a great panel yesterday. There was a, panel of nurses here at the HLTH conference, which, is my first time attending. But I was thrilled to hear, nurses leading the challenge when it comes to advancing, virtual nursing and, community health care and the acute care space, And I cannot wait to hear more nurses talk about how that is transitioning and all of those great ideas are transitioning into the post acute long term care and assisted living space, and I think we have the opportunity to do a whole lot more of that here at HLTH in the future. and I'm super excited to, you know, be able to help contribute to that.

What sort of things are you looking to learn and take back to your work, from the conference, Like, often, networking and professional development are two of the things that you would look for, in a professional event like this. what are you trying to bring back, to the Institute in your work, from this event?

Well, I got to meet you, first of all, right? So who knew that was going to happen? Hashtag glow up, yeah. Right? How fabulous is that? I think I really value networking. I really value the opportunity to talk about ideas and share ideas. And even at breakfast this morning when you and I met, we got to meet an innovative nurse that has created an amazing app that I can't wait to learn more about. I think about the framework of the world that I am serving, which is largely nursing home and assisted living. And I think about the technologies that they're currently using today, how different they are from the acute care space. You may not be aware, 80 percent of nursing homes in the United States use the electronic health record that is not Epic nor Cerner, which are two of the biggest in the acute care space. it's a company called Point Click Care out of Canada, and they currently serve 83 percent of the nursing home space. And in the assisted living world, there are a number of different electronic health record providers serving those spaces. So when you think about fragmentation of, electronic health record data, some of the things I'm looking at and I'm really interested in are, How are people solving for interoperability? How are people solving for these disparate, sources of data that exist? How are we, making it easier to connect the dots on some of these things? And how are companies working together? We have to be thinking about, different models for providers to be partnering together, as opposed to necessarily competing with each other all the time. Right? Yeah. And I think that that is where the real strength will lie in the future is how will these different companies come together and how will they find out how to celebrate and help each other grow,

Ooh, nursing partnerships for innovation to grow up. Right. Yeah. Quality of care.

There's a lot of opportunity there. So those are some of the things I'm seeking and looking for. You know, looking to learn while I'm here.

Amazing. So, the show is called The Glow Up, right? And a glow up, for those of you who don't know, is a notable transformation, maybe like a rebirth, a fabulous coming out in, great style. So, in the next six months to a year, What sort of fabulous transformation are you looking to make in your work?

I love that so much. Nobody's ever asked me that question before. So thank you, Nathan. I am interested in seeing more awareness and more alignment occur between what's happening at a policy level, what's happening at a funding level, what's happening at an awareness level of how Older adults are living and growing and working and receiving care and services in our country. And so I'm actually working on a white paper right now and I'm hoping that I'll be able to get published later in the spring this year, this next year. And so those are some of my like personal goals of continuing to try to contribute and put good information out there for people to make decisions. Yeah. I get a lot of opportunity to meet with policy makers at our Innovation Center. we sponsored, some policy makers during the Republican National Convention this year, which was just a block away from our Innovation Center. We've had Democratic lawmakers come and visit. it is amazing how much they don't know. About the long term care space and how, what some of the real problems are that nurses are facing in providing care and services.

Was there a blind spot that you were surprised that policy makers have in this space?

I think the blind spot, I've been aware of it for some time, but I'm continued to be aware of the fact that, their understanding of the difference between, people who are living and getting care in an assisted living center versus a nursing home. How those, services are so different and how they're paid for is so different and The amount of dollars that we're spending on Medicare alone, they should care more about that. There should be more care about that, and more focus on that, on how do we invest and make those areas better, and so those are areas I think that I'm continued, continuing to, I see it as an opportunity. Whenever I see the, you know, deer in the headlights look, I see it as an opportunity for education.

There was a fantastic conversation on the Hit Like a Girl podcast, specifically talking about, the folks in the innovation space, within the digital services org. one of their big passion projects was right like. The ability to fix the user experience on a Medicaid form makes healthcare easier for 80 million people, right? So like the scale of some of the problems that we're working with, just because there's so many people who need. You know, who are on Medicare, it takes up so much of our budget, right? That, being able to even make small changes in that experience, in that workflow can have dramatic impacts into care as well as, people's lives.

Isn't that amazing, right? When you think about What the emphasis and the focus on just raising awareness around some of those issues like that. It could be life changing for someone who feels that that's overwhelming for them.

So I'm having a little bit of a realization, right? Like when we talk about long term care, when we're talking about like nursing homes. often, that's considered like an elderly healthcare, or like a healthcare for older people kind of problem. But, as somebody who is very much in a sandwich generation moment myself, right, I have, children, you know, who are high schoolers and, you know, going into college and navigating. You know, their young adult health, and I'm also, you know, in a very fraught time. it's been hard, mentally, for many children around the world, especially in the U. S., and, So, I initially came into this conversation thinking we were having a conversation about improving the experience of my parents. But what I'm realizing in talking to you, is that the conversation about skilled care, about care for our aging populations, is really about, the level of care that we all have, as well as, around some, social responsibilities, right? You know, what is that compact contract that we have socially, to care for our elders? How does your connection to the mission, you know, it feels like it has to be a mission driven kind of work and you're very passionate about it. How does, your experience and your values impact the mission and the work that you do?

Great question again. I think I was educated and raised in an environment that, focused on the value of a human and that we are all imbibed with a certain set of gifts and skills that we come into the world with and that we have the opportunity to use those to help others and that we need to figure out what that path is and so I value choice very much for myself. Very stubborn, as well, right? And I don't want people telling me what to do. And what I've learned as I've been working with older adults is that the older we get, the fewer choices we get to make about our lives. Because, Other people, other payment systems, other things, end up making those choices for us, Our age, our physical health changes, our ability to move, we need more help with maybe going to buy groceries, or we need help with cleaning our apartment, or we need help with taking medications. And so the thing that really drives me is how can help people have choice and independence for as long as possible and in the best quality possible, right? And I think If we let people decide, make some of those decisions for themselves and we, we try to create an environment that helps make that happen for them. One, we're going to need it. We're going to all need to be able to be more independent longer. Citing my earlier stat, but I think we really need it for ourselves as well, right? We want, I think people want choice. my mother, is 85 and she just moved into an apartment, sold her home, moved into an apartment, she is having a rebirth of sorts in her life. My father passed away a couple years ago. been married her whole life and she's going out to dinner, she's meeting new people, she's making new friends, she's going to exercise class, she's, she's getting a rebirth and she's inspiring. And, you know, aging, in our country is, it should be a sign of. That we are doing something right, as opposed to something that we are dreading or not looking forward to. And I want to change that, right? I want us to think differently about what that means. Because, you know, every year that we get to be here, it's like another year we get to celebrate. Yeah.

I'm a little dumbfounded at this idea of choice. Being this most important thing, it resounds so strongly, right? Like, we do not get to choose the countries we're born to. We do not get to choose our DNA. We do not get to choose so many things, but how we respond to the moment we're in. and how we are able to, behold humans in that process is, like, the most we have at some level. And, to be preserving that for people as they age into, these difficult, uncomfortable, you know, kind of embarrassing, painful Like, there's so many reasons why aging stinks, really. to be able to do that, just, to bring dignity and choice to that. what a wonderful idea. I think that's gonna be a highlight that I take with me. we have just a couple more minutes, so, I'm gonna be bold, cause that's the theme for the event. if you had the opportunity to step on the main stage and encourage this audience to be bold, in their work in some way. what would your call to action be to the HLTH community?

I would say to them, open your eyes to the nursing home and assisted living communities that are in your space, the leaders that are in that space and the incredible work that they are doing to advocate and care for, not only the people that are living in those spaces, but the people who are working in those spaces as well. Invite them into your conversations. Invite them into the work that you are doing, and learn how your work connects with their work. So that we can stitch these disparate places in our healthcare system together in a more meaningful way. they are smart and innovative. and willing to work so hard, they oftentimes don't get an ask to the table. And, and that's what I would encourage this group to do. Amazing.

if I've learned anything at HLTH, it is that nothing happens, unless nurses are on board. And that there is so much you can learn from them. I'm glad, that there are voices out there, advocating for nurses and innovation and bringing those insights. to all levels of, the healthcare experience, by bringing that advocacy and that voice, to the world. Thank you so much for joining us today on The Glow Up. It's been such a fantastic conversation.

Thanks for having me, Nathan.

Amazing.