Flourishing Communities: New Cassel Retirement Center

Natalie Jones: Hi, everyone. Good morning or afternoon, depending on where you're joining us from today. While we give people a little bit more time to join, we'd love to learn where that is. Go ahead and drop your community name or organization name, and where you're joining us from in the chat window. We'd love to see who's in the audience today and if you've joined us before.

You may be expecting to see someone who has a little bit blonder hair than mine, our CMO Paige is not able to be here today. I'm Natalie Jones, Director of Marketing at LifeLoop, and I am thrilled to host this very special session today. So welcome to our Flourishing Communities Webinar Series, where about every 2 weeks we spotlight senior living communities that are leveraging technology to create exceptional experiences.

And I think most of our audience knows LifeLoop. But to summarize, we have one goal, and that's to help senior living communities flourish, and we've been serving the senior living industry for 25 years with our technology solutions that help more than 4,700 communities engage their residents, delight their staff, and connect family members. So brief overview, our discussion today will run for about 30 minutes. We absolutely welcome your questions and encourage a lively chat. If you do have questions for the panelists, please drop those in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. And at the end of the webinar, we'd love your feedback via a very short survey to understand what you enjoyed, what you'd like to see from these webinars moving forward. And a few days after we complete the webinar today, you'll also receive an email with the recording of today's discussion that you're welcome to view at any time or share with your colleagues.

Alrighty. So, without further ado, onto our incredible guests for today's episode. So earlier this year, LifeLoop announced our Communities That Shine Awards that recognize communities that are implementing solutions in ways that deliver real impact for staff residents and family members. I am particularly excited to have our winner of the Brilliance in Resident Wellness award join us today, New Cassel Retirement Center. New Cassel was awarded this category based on their innovative use of LifeLoop to individualize resident engagement, streamline operations, and improve communication between residents and family members. And we will dive into that shortly.

So, Tracy, the CEO, and Sister Marilyn, the Pastoral Care Community Relations Coordinator, are with us today. Welcome, Tracy and Sister Marilyn. Thank you so much for joining us.

Tracy Lichti: Sure.

Natalie Jones: We're so happy to have you. And let's start with some brief intros. Tracy, can you tell us about New Cassel Retirement Center and your journey to senior living?

Tracy Lichti: Of course, so New Cassel is located in Omaha, Nebraska. It is actually the largest assisted living in the state of Nebraska, with 179 apartments. Plus, we serve seniors as well in our adult day center on a Monday through Friday situation. So, we serve an additional up to 50 folks that come to see us and spend time with us and have engagement during the day. So we're really large, robust facility that was founded by the school sister to St. Francis. So, we are very faithful in what we do, and that's Sister Marilyn is on our team, and she is actually a Sister herself. And it is an important piece of what we do there. And I'm really excited today to be able to tell you how we use LifeLoop in our building to make our operations work a lot smoother and how it just has saved us so much time.

I will just kinda give a little bit of how did I get here, how did I choose to work in senior living. First of all, I had such an amazing connection with my grandparents, and so, being around others that were of that age never felt uncomfortable for me. And I started my journey in healthcare as a food service director, actually. And while I was a food service director, I had an amazing mentor in administrator that encouraged me to move forward and get my administrator’s license. And so, since then I've worked at just 3 facilities over the last 18 years as their administrator, and/or their CEO.

Natalie Jones: Wow! Well, and you are actually in Washington, DC, right now. An active advocate for older adults, and not only at your community, but also at the state and national levels. Can you share some about your efforts of your work outside of New Cassel?

Tracy Lichti: Of course. So as the CEO of New Cassel, my role is, of course, to know what's happening within the building of New Cassel, but also to have responsibility or advocacy efforts outside the walls of New Cassel that support those residents that we care for.

I must say though, it for me it seems much broader. I've been able to be part of Nebraska's Healthcare Association Board, in which we were advocating for all Nebraskans, and have had opportunities to meet with our legislative body on what is the best for our seniors, so I've taken that pretty seriously. And I have an opportunity right now as well to serve on our Governor’s Advisory Council for those that have dementia or Alzheimer’s and other dementias, to be able to provide feedback right to who can make laws and funding available to those Nebraskans that need that.

Then, on the national level as you mentioned, I am here this week in DC. We came as a group of 20 individuals that support long-term care in Nebraska, and came to the Hill to meet our Nebraska representatives that are on a federal level, making decisions on what is best for us. Maybe not all what's best for us right now, I know there's a pretty sticky topic in place for a minimum staffing requirements that is not great for Nebraskans, it's not great for many people in the United States. So, it was a big topic that we were able to cover with them. I love being able to advocate, be their voice. They can't come here, so someone has to. And so we get to be here and speak for them and protect them if we can.

Natalie Jones: Wow! That's fantastic. You stay busy, clearly.

Tracy Lichti: Yeah.

Natalie Jones: And Sister Marilyn. How about you? Your work and your journey to senior living also includes some really inspiring advocacy work. Can you share your story as well?

Sr. Marilyn Ketteler: Sure. I just wanna thank you for inviting us today, we love sharing the story of New Cassel. As Tracy said, I'm a member of the school Sisters of St. Francis. So this has been a ministry that's been near and dear to our hearts for the past 51 years, that New Cassel has been in existence. And over that time the school sisters really kinda have particular values that we ask our institutions to espouse, and so direct services are important for us, advocacy is important for us, as you heard Tracy just talk about, and empowerment where at times people speak with their own voices for the things that they need. So my journey to senior living has kind of included all of that.

I spent 6 years in New Orleans, working with the senior empowerment project. We did leadership training and empowered senior citizens to speak for themselves. We were able to win free public transportation in the city of New Orleans, which was a great benefit for seniors. We also work early on trying to lower the price of prescription drugs, which is really important all these years and continues to be important for senior citizens. So kind of worked on that empowerment end of it. Direct service, I have been in parish ministry for a number of years as well where I did one-on-one visits with people in their homes. I visited the nursing homes in those facilities. We did other kinds of programming. We took monthly bus trips with senior citizens. We provided educational speakers on a variety of topics. It was a great joy for me to work, not only with seniors but within the church as well.

And then most recently, I spent 8 years in leadership in my own religious community. We are an international community, but we have a province here in the United States, and it's centered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And so we’re a leadership team of 3 and responsible to take care of all of the things that relate to the province, and that includes the sisters. And since I really enjoy working with our older sisters, that was a primary part of what I was doing. In that time, in those 8 years, we completed a $9.2 million renovation project of our care facility. I served on the board for our memory care unit out there, visited a lot with the older sisters in our care facilities and out on missions to see what it was that they need, and also spent some time with our sisters and the PACE program in Wisconsin, providing direct services to those sisters who are in that program.

Then after those 8 years, I was freed up to come back to Nebraska, which is my home state, and went to Tracy to just network about where I might be used in ministry, or where I might be helpful, and Tracy asked me to come to New Cassel. So, I've been at New Cassel for about the last 4 years now, on staff. Prior to that time, though over those years, I was about 19 years on the board at different times here at New Cassel, so I kinda knew New Cassel inside and out, and it's always been dear to my heart. So while I'm here, I have the privilege of serving on our pastoral care team, and New Cassel is sort of unique this way in that as a Catholic facility, we have 2 full-time pastoral care ministers in our building. So, I feel good about what we're doing, and that New Cassel continues to encourage and want to develop the spiritual life of the residents that we have here. So I'm happy to be doing that, and happy to be here.

Natalie Jones: Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Clearly, just the commitment from the both of you, you know, to what you do, and serving older adults is so impressive. And now we'll talk a lot about how you do that right at New Cassel. So I'd love to kind of dive into that piece of the conversation today about what makes New Cassel Retirement Center a flourishing community. So, Tracy, why don't we start with you? New Cassel was an early adopter of technology to improve resident experiences and actually started using LifeLoop over 5 years ago. Tell us a bit about the challenges you focused on and your technology strategy to improve them.

Tracy Lichti: So you're 100% correct. We've been using LifeLoop, I've worked at New Cassel about 5 years. It was there right before I got there, and we've been able to continue to just grow how many people utilize it, and how we utilize it. I would say one of the silver linings out of COVID is our residents got more comfortable using the technology, like figuring out how they could FaceTime their loved one, or if we help them, so that they got more comfortable. And so I would say that was one of the silver linings. Because our average resident is, you know, between 84 and 87 years of age, it’s not something that they use much at home. And so it was not comfortable for them, they would way rather pick up the phone and just call the front desk and say, my light bulb’s out in my in my apartment, or call our Life Enrichment department and say, I need to ride to the doctor, because that's in our building, that's who sets that all up.

We're now, even just today I was checking my all my LifeLoop notifications, and I have a resident putting in his own transportation orders, and I have residents putting in their own work orders and their families doing that from their home. And so it doesn't happen right like super-fast, and I think the key is continuous communication. When a new resident moves in, Marilee, our marketer, is amazing at making sure they understand how important it is to stay connected with LifeLoop, to accept that invitation to be part of it, and use it at their best as a convenience. I really love that they've grown, residents have grown in their use, family, and even some of our staff have felt more comfortable as we've used it longer.

Natalie Jones: That's wonderful. Yeah, and that adoption continues to grow when they see that they're able to accomplish things with within the platform, which is excellent. So, when you think about the time that your residents and staff spend in their daily tasks, and you talked a little bit about it just there. Can you dig in a little bit further on, like, what did that look like before using LifeLoop? So the pre-LifeLoop years? Any examples of what that looked like then?

Tracy Lichti: Well, my pre-example would be maintenance requests. We use the maintenance section so heavily in our building because, I know I mentioned, we're 179 apartments. It's a big campus. And so, having a central place where work orders can be entered and utilized in comparison to before, it would have been a paper trail. You put it in the log. Literally the maintenance man would have to write it on this little hand notebook and then go do the task, and maybe the circle didn't get closed or it didn’t get finished.

And the beauty of LifeLoop is, as you do those tasks and you enter something that you want repaired, you get those notifications back that it's in progress, or when it's complete. And so it makes it so much more efficient for that team. Our building has 8 maintenance team members and in different shifts, and so, it's necessary that it's automated. It's been immensely helpful for them to be productive and work with less. We used to have 12 staff members in the Maintenance department. We have 8 now like, and it wasn't because we chose to have 8 instead of 12. It's because there aren't as many staff members out there to select from and hire, and so, as long as you can find efficiencies, you're not missing the work that a resident needs within their apartment. That's my example for maintenance that it's been beneficial for us.

Natalie Jones: Wow, yeah. So increasing that visibility into kind of that workflow while saving your team's time and satisfying residents. That's a big plus. I love to hear that. You mentioned, with residents getting more comfortable with using the technology, are you seeing that also kind of drive other aspects of engagement where maybe that wasn't happening before? For example, engagement with family or communication with family. How is that with LifeLoop?

Tracy Lichti: It is improved. They understand that that can be their go-to place to get any information that they might like. Our strong area as I mentioned is maintenance, and transportation is another really strong place, like they know when their mom or dad has a medical appointment. Maybe their mom or dad can't manage putting in the request for the ride, and so they can do that straight from wherever they are. They could do it at the doctor's office. They could do it from their own home, or whatever they're comfortable with, so that it already gets set up, and then they get noticed when it's approved.

The other is our meals, and I know we're gonna talk a little bit about that. But just a minimum posting your activity calendar, posting your weekly menu, allowing engagement through chat, which is more of an email chat, but at least lets them have a connection with something that someone, if they have a question, and that we can get back to them as quickly as possible. I do know some facilities did choose to use it as a way to communicate COVID information as well during our pandemic. New Cassel, that's not one thing that we did, because we wanted to be even broader with the people we were communicating with, but I do know it would have it definitely would have been an additional resource, correct.

Natalie Jones: Yeah, absolutely well. And you're clearly using the tool in a lot of different ways. And you know, it's really just a channel for what works best for you and your community, your residents and families, and that kind of flexibility is always there.

Tracy Lichti: Exactly.

Natalie Jones: Thank you, Tracy. Sister Marilyn, how about you? How are you using LifeLoop for pastoral care?

Sr. Marilyn Ketteler: It's interesting in pastoral care, because we like to think about ourselves as high touch, but the technology is also helpful to us. So initially, when a resident moves into the building, we in pastoral care like to just go do a visit with them. And that is the hopes of beginning a relationship, a significant relationship with them, so it would not be unusual for me to spend an hour and a half to 2 hours in a new resident’s apartment, just having a conversation, and part of that is to get to know them. So I start to collect in that some biography information. And as we're having that conversation, we begin to identify things that they've done in their past life that they've enjoyed, interests and hobbies that maybe they were active in, kind of work/careers that they spent their time in, we talk about their family members and get to know them.

So all of that is to be putting information after that kind of visit into LifeLoop. So for instance, we can put the biography information in, and that then not only is helpful for us, remembering, because it's hard to remember 179 people and their histories, but other staff members are looking at it. So, for instance, we had a recent Honoring Our Veterans event and we had a gentleman who came to the event that we didn't have a lot of information about, they hadn't been able to collect that. They were able to go to the biography information and gather information about his years of service that they could then talk about to the crowd that was gathered. For this Honoring Our Veterans event, so that, you know it doesn't always seem like it's that important. But on that day to that gentleman, it was important.

So and then, in finding that was, we talk about what their hobbies, what were their interests? We can start looking at that, and there's a place in LifeLoop where you can check or add, these are their interest, these are their likes or dislikes. And then we begin to look at well, what other residents have those likes and begin to pair them up, and we've been able to enlarge our bridge playing group to the point where now we have to get another couple of tables.

Tracy Lichti: Yeah, to get an extra table like, yeah.

Sr. Marilyn Ketteler: People to come and join them. We have a lady that loves to sew, and we often have people here that if they have a ripped seam, or if they, you know, our laundry department takes care of some of it, but I don't think they hem pants for shortening things, and so she is more than happy to do that. So we know that she's a resource, she loves to sew. She's been making clothing protectors for residents; she's been making the bags that hang on their walkers so they can carry things on their walkers. She's been just really a great find for us and for the other residents, so that we can pair them up and get the things done that people want to have done.

So we are happy about those things. In addition to that, I also have a conversation with them about kind of their spiritual life. What gives them life, what gives them energy. What kind of prayer styles do they have? Do they like to come to daily mass or Sunday mass? What is it that they're looking for? So I get that information; we, as pastoral care team, then have that information and can be available to residents to try to encourage, help them with their questions and help them with their prayer. We address a lot of end-of-life issues with them and that information we can gather, collect, put there, make it available for us to make sure we're doing follow-up with. So we really appreciate that availability and information available to us.

And, as I said, the one-on-one visits often give me opportunities to just be present with them. But then I find out other things like, ‘Sister, the light bulb in my shower is burned out.’ Well, okay, I'll go put in a maintenance request. Two weeks ago, I visited a lady who was soaking a blouse, one of her blouses had a stain, she was soaking it in the sink. And she said, but the water doesn't stay in there. So I said, well, I'll put it in a work order request, and I said it could be the next day before you know, because it was late in the day by the time I was gonna do that. I put it in and ran off to another appointment, and when I came back there was 2 messages. One was the maintenance order is in progress, and the second one was, it's completed. So the lady was astonished that within less than 2 hours she had her job done, and she was more than happy to continue soaking her blouse.

So those are just the little kind of ways that we kind of help and use LifeLoop to help us. Otherwise, I either had to track down the maintenance person or go to the front desk or find some way to help her with that. So LifeLoop has just made it a lot easier, and you know, I think many of our staff find that, fortunately for me, because pastoral care does a lot of one-on-ones with our residents in their apartments. We see and hear those kinds of things. So life enrichment, if they're at an activity, they're not thinking about the stopper in the sink doesn't work. So we have an opportunity to be present, which is great.

Natalie Jones: That's excellent. Well, and you know, it sounds like Sister Marilyn, that the resident personalization obviously is so critical to creating a meaningful experience for residents, and it seems like LifeLoop has enabled you to both facilitate that in a way that's efficient for staff, and meaningful for residents.

Sr. Marilyn Ketteler: Absolutely.

Natalie Jones: Wonderful. Well, and one other element of that I'd love to hear a bit more from you on is, you know, on the family element; so keeping them connected is also absolutely crucial. So has LifeLoop helped you kind of overcome some of those challenges? And what does that look like?

Sr. Marilyn Ketteler: Yeah, LifeLoop, especially as we're visiting in the one-on-ones, we kind of get a sense of you know, their ups and their downs for the residents. And sometimes, when I'm getting a sense of the downs, I'll enter it into a conversation with them about, you know, have you heard from your son or your daughter? Have you heard from your friend? And you know, to just try to encourage them because I see their list of contacts as well. So it's like we can encourage them. And I've even gone so far as to call the contact and say, You know, they really just need somebody right now, could you maybe just touch base with them and let them know that you're thinking about them?

And so, we had a lady here, a resident here. Her daughter from Washington, DC was visiting a couple of weeks ago and she came to, the lady loves to come to the Rosary making class, so she came with her mother to the Rosary making class, and realized that she really enjoyed it. And she said, Oh, Sister, how can I know when the next class will be? She wanted to remind her mother. And I said, look at the activities calendar. It's posted there and you'll be able to, because I can't always run after and remember who comes and who doesn't, she could remind her so she could call her.

And then, too, all of those activities we take pictures at them so family members can see the activities that the residents are going to. It gives them a point of conversation sometimes, just to say, Gee, mom, either, are you going to that event, it looks like it could be a lot of fun. Or, Mom, I saw you in one of the pictures at the event, and it looked like you were having a really good time. So just that ability to connect people together is wonderful.

Natalie Jones: Absolutely. And such a great example that you just shared of all the different ways that you can truly integrate practical technology best practices to kind of improve those everyday scenarios, tasks, situations. Which is wonderful. Thank you for sharing, Sister Marilyn.

Sr. Marilyn Ketteler: You’re welcome.

Natalie Jones: Tracy, in that same vein, you've seen some really impressive results from your efforts to kind of strengthen those family connections. Can you share the insight into how this improves your initiatives around guest dining? And you had some really wonderful anecdotes I'd love for you to share as well.

Tracy Lichti: Of course. So as I introduced myself and you heard that my background is food service, so I must tell you, having guests to dinner was important to me. And before we had LifeLoop active and up and going, we might have had 50 guest meals in an entire month. And there is a rare time now that we have less than 50 guest meals every week.

And so we are adamant about every week, posting out the menu for the next week, so that families know when they can come. Our satisfaction service for our food was below average, in my opinion, when I started at New Cassel 5 years ago, and now we have an above 90% satisfaction, which is rare. Part of the point that I'm saying, that is if you have good food, the residents want to invite their families to join them. They want to be proud that this is their home, and so by making them aware of what we offer, by pushing out the menu, we’re allowing them to come and build a routine of when they want to visit.

And we have a son that comes every Sunday, he travels most weeks when he does his work, but he is committed to coming on Sundays. He'll come and be with his mom, join her for mass, and then he stays for lunch, and he sends me often on Monday mornings messages: ‘My lunch yesterday was amazing, Tracy, I can't believe I get that for $8’, you know, but it isn't about the dollars that we generate, it's about the connection and about the resident enjoying a meal with their loved one.

We also have a private dining room that is regularly booked, where people can have up to 12 people dine with them, and they have birthday parties and baby showers, and you name it. They're gathering for some reason, and they have a lot of the ‘Meet New Cassel’ provided food items whether it's off the menu or they use our catering services. They love dining with us now. We've increased it so much that some weeks that feels sometimes almost overwhelming, but we're proud to be able to offer that service to our residents and their families.

Natalie Jones: That's wonderful. Oh, I feel like we could talk for another hour. I know we're getting close on time. I think, for our closing question, Tracy, I would kick it back to you. And you know, a lot of the folks who join us for these webinars are either current LifeLoop users looking for additional best practices on how to implement for residents and staff but also those who are exploring LifeLoop as an option. What advice might you give for communities who are exploring LifeLoop and possibly rolling that out at their communities?

Tracy Lichti: I feel like for us, when I joined, it was brand new. And then we also had a brand-new electronic health record that was all happening at the exact same time. And I would advise to do one at a time, first of all. And I had to make a commitment to my team that we were not gonna add anything else; we’re gonna master these, and we're gonna get better at it. And I think you pick which area would save your team the most time and start with that. Whether it is work orders, whether it is transportation to take our residents to their physician appointments, or whether it's life enrichment. Taking attendance at activities is so powerful, and it helps the activities team know which activities were most attended. So you know to keep doing those, and then the ones that nobody comes to, like, use your time other ways. And so I would say, pick whatever is most important in your building to create efficiency and still provide amazing quality care to the residents of your facility.

Natalie Jones: That's excellent advice. Well, Tracy and Sister Marilyn, thank you so much both of you, for your time today, and of course, thank you to everyone who's joined us for today's discussion and engaged with us in the chat. Again, we would so value your feedback just by taking the short survey at the close of this webinar. We're always seeking to bring you the most valuable insights and best practices that can ultimately help benefit your communities as well. And for those of you who are interested in learning more about the LifeLoop products, you'll have an opportunity to make that request in the survey as well, we'd be happy to schedule a follow-up personalized demo for you and your team.

And in closing our next webinar of this series will be on June 26th with another Communities That Shine winner, Opportunities, Inc. I hope you'll join us for that, and thank you all again for joining us, and have a wonderful day.

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