Bethlen Almanac 1997 (Ligonier)

The Bethlen Home

The Bethlen Home in 1997

We are in an era of change and faced with many challenges. I read and hear constantly about the future of long term care and how it will affect us through new standards, upgraded regulations, fiscal constraints and ever-evolving concepts of negotiating with managed care organizations. All these lead us to a great deal of confusion and feeling of insecurity as we face the next millennium. We must take the time to re-evaluate our present process and functions. That’s why a Strategic Planning Committee was established to look towards our future plans.

Since we are involved with long range planning, the Executive Board met with James B. Pieffer, President of Senior Care Management, Inc. who is also the Executive Vice President of the Presbyterian Association on Aging, and Ronald G. Barrett, Executive Director of Redstone Highlands. The information and their presentation helped us with the direction we want to go. Their proposal was handed out to our Executive Committee members. As a result of that meeting, I was authorized to notify Mr. Pieffer to begin as a first step, to evaluate our market analysis, assessing the “target population” in Ligonier Valley and vicinity.

These assessments were conducted to provide us first with market feasibility information that help us to determine whether we can sustain a particular service in the market before we initiate it. Second, the assessment would serve as a tool to determine the community needs with respect to aging services and our ability to begin to meet them. These analyses gave us a range of perspectives as to what types of clients we can expect to serve in our geographic boundaries.

My opinion is that those steps are important and it is good business procedure to gather and analyze as much information from different perspectives as possible before starting anything, in essence, spending a relatively small amount to avoid losing potentially large amount of money, if the undertaking is not well conceived and successful.

I am, of course, as other administrators, concerned with increasing regulatory and competitive pressures in a managed care environment. It is up to us, here in Ligonier, to choose the direction to go in planning our future.

Now let me just say, the so-called “continuum of care” today is a national model. Continuum care means that residents have access to several levels of care beginning with home care, independent living, personal care/assisted living and long term nursing home care. If a resident needs change, this is the transition from one level to another.

Today, we do not have the personal/assisted care service. In our old wings there are 15 rooms which do not come up to today’s building codes,

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