An Integral View

Welcome to the first entry of the Laguna Honda blog.

This is a space for conversations about long term care that we hope will educate, inform and enlighten.

As we undergo an organizational culture change coinciding with our transition into a new 780-person facility serving seniors and adults with disabilities, we hope to engage the on-line healthcare community in the questions that are driving our own development:

• How to encourage independence and community integration for people who live in skilled nursing facilities.

• How to foster a healing environment by constructing both buildings and relationships that promote health and well-being.

• How to strengthen community partnerships among health care providers, advocates, regulators, educators, and researchers that add quality of life and quality of care for people who live in skilled nursing facilities.

• How to sustain best practices in skilled nursing care, organizational effectiveness and fiscal responsibility to promote innovative excellence.

Laguna Honda is an acute care hospital, a nursing facility, and a rehabilitation center.

We take a systems approach to our work. Everything is connected. We see ourselves as one part of a larger network of relationships and commitments that has at its center the well being of each person who receives our care. Our network that extends to providers, families, community based organizations, healthcare educators, and many, many others in the extended, affirming communities that make up a single life.

Facilities like ours are becoming more finely tuned to meet specific needs that cannot be served elsewhere in our communities. Only after a referring physician, a discharging hospital and an admitting program agree that a skilled nursing facility is the best possible option, do people become residents or patients at Laguna Honda.

We use the terms “resident” and “patient” somewhat interchangeably. Our patients come to Laguna Honda typically for short term rehabilitation, after which they return to other community settings. Our residents come for longer term care, and may complete their lives while they are with us. We always remember that we are guests in their home.

Like any organization or community of long standing, we have had our share of triumphs and challenges.  Our goal is to continually reinvent ourselves as an organization to better serve the changing needs of the safety net population we serve.

We hope that on this blog colleagues throughout the internet will find a place to mutually contribute to one another’s pursuit of excellence.