In our opinion what’s missing in today’s Health & Senior Care system is Continuity of Care between you, your Doctor and the Senior Care System at every level. 

Today, our choices for health & senior care are largely dictated by insurance companies and private institutions.  The insurance companies & large institutions have no personal investment or involvement in the day to day operations, yet they are the ones who direct the care and services they deem appropriate.  They promise to provide this or that, but we have learned that promises made by the actual person who is doing the work, is worth much more, than promises made by an impersonal, third party.  Doctors who participate in these insurance programs & large institutions do their best to comply with the insurance company’s standards in order to get paid.

Today’s system is focused on “Acute Care” or “Quick Care”, everything is frequently changing: the doctor, the staff, caregivers.  It is next to impossible to keep track of who is who or what the expectations and responsibilities are of any one person.   This short-term, “quick care” system provides little continuity, which is needed to effectively manage care for a patient with complex, chronic illnesses, especially for Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. 

If you are lucky, you may have a doctor in the community that you know well and whom knows you, but that doctor often does not visit you in the hospital, home or other senior care setting. Most personal doctors do not communicate with the entire care team of administrators, management, caregivers and family who are with you or your loved one on a daily basis to get daily updates. 

We wish we could go back in time to when doctors were allowed to be doctors and not labeled as “providers”.  In the past your doctor was responsible for coordinating, directing and managing their patients care and he or she were accountable for the outcomes. In the past Doctors expected to be available and be responsible for all aspects of care.  Those were the days when there was a relationship with your doctor and expectation of sticking with your doctor over the long haul. That was the ethos of being “the doctor”.

This new system of Managed Health & Senior Care is disjointed. Our system has moved from one of providing Continuity of Care to a system focused on Acute Care, Urgent Care or Quick Care which offer little Continuity of Care. The old system used to be the standard of care in medicine. Continuity of Care is what is needed to provide the best care for those with chronic diseases including Alzheimer’s disease.  The disjointed, quick care system of today, seems to devalue the idea of building relationships & being accountable.   Unfortunately, in the Acute Care System the infirmed person with chronic care needs and their families are the ones stuck trying to fill in the gaps and coordinate care & services they know little about, feeling frustrated and burned out.

The owners of TLCSL, pride themselves making themselves available and working as a team, together with their residents, residents’ families and their caregiving staff to ensure they have the most up to date information about each resident’s status. 

The focus of TLCSL is on continuity of care, communication & building the ongoing trusting relationship required to provide the highest quality of care to its residents especially those with chronic care needs.