In our last blog post, we looked at the Vision of Lindashell.com; the ideal future we strive to create. We want to see long-term care fundamentally change to an industry of evidence-based practices that are routinely reviewed and ethics that are routinely prioritized. And, rather than throwing every plan at the wall to see if one will stick and produce this vision, we have a Mission statement that guides our work toward this result.

Mission is the “how” of any organization—what must be done to achieve its Vision. Our mission is to impact the quality of care, add value, and enhance the customer experience. In our years of work, we’ve found these to be the most effective and everlasting ways to bring about change in aging services.

Impacting quality in the lives of long term care recipients doesn’t mean making things look nice on the outside. It doesn’t mean elevating the needs of those working with these recipients over the needs of the recipients themselves. True quality comes from investing in the patient first and making their expectations for care your standard of care. If there’s any doubt as to what those expectations are, we believe in asking the patient directly what quality care means to them as an individual.

Adding value refers to the long term care employee culture and how those employees see the nature of their work. Many long term health facilities have a problem with retention and tend to blame it on the lack of pay or benefits they’re able to provide. But when talking to nurses who have stayed in the industry for years, their response is that they’ve found great work environments that listen to them, develop and utilize their strengths, and make them feel valued for doing excellent work—little to no mention of money. A recent Gallup study confirmed these findings http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/191435/millennials-work-life.aspx

These companies can help employees viscerally see the value in their work by investing in education resources and onsite tools, and investing time in making their concerns or suggestions feel heard. This way, the organization itself can gain value from the insight of the workers that are most in touch with its customers while those workers see that they are changing lives and growing in the ways that they hope to.

Enhancing customer experience means providing quality of life over quantity for care recipients, and life-enriching experiences over the mundane routine many can receive from their end of life care. This is where progressive research in long term care is going as patients accept their limited time left to live and look to care facilities to provide meaning and variety in their lives’ last years.

Think for yourself—is this Mission something I can take part in with my organization? How can I make quality care more of a priority? How can I add value to the important work me and my employees do?