McKnight's Podcast

By McKnights

Conversations with industry newsmakers in the Homecare, Long Term Care, and Senior Living market.... more

· Health & Fitness

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How many episodes does McKnight's Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 310 episodes available.

McKnight's Podcast episodes:

March 27, 2025 Hospice of the Chesapeake leader aims to think outside the box on hospice, palliative care
Education remains a barrier to hospice care, Rachel Jordan, director of legislative affairs and advocacy at Hospice of the Chesapeake, said. There is still a lot of fear and stigma surrounding the word hospice. The provider, which has four locations and recently began offering high-flow oxygen, tries to reassure people that hospice does not have to mean forgoing treatment. As a nurse practitioner, Jordan said her goal is to support the patient and family, improve the symptom burden and increase quality of life. The African-American community, in particular, has mistrust pertaining to hospice, she pointed out. To help spread the word about hospice to this community, she reaches out to local Black churches. And to raise awareness about hospice among caregivers, she is working with nursing programs at institutions of higher education to intertwine hospice and palliative care education throughout the curriculum. Her organization is working to prepare for the Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) tool, which is set to begin Oct. 1.

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Show contributors:
McKnight’s Home Care Editor Liza Berger; Rachel Jordan, Director of Legislative Affairs and Advocacy, Hospice of the Chesapeake
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21min
March 25, 2025 New ‘CareForce’ institute aims a way out of the nation’s SNFs workforce crisis
The new Lunder CareForce Institute makes no small plans: It aims to be a driving force behind solving the nation’s frontline healthcare worker shortage.
Established by Hebrew SeniorLife, a Harvard Medical School-affiliate, the institute opened for business last week with sector veteran Tammy Retalic at the helm.
It will employ a mix of technology and elite caregiving expertise, as well as online modules that inject experts into training and education cycles. The first nurse-aide students should be enrolled by mid-summer, Retalic told McKnight’s Executive Editor James M. Berklan in this McKnight’s Newsmakers podcast.
An LPN track will be added within 18 months, she added.
The concept uses a “hub” model that extends into the local greater Boston community. If that can be successfully grown around the state, Retalic is confident its influence can blossom further from there.
“If that is something we can accomplish, which we are confident we can … we’ll have the ability to go throughout the country and replicate this type of model, and that’s really our big vision,” said Relatic, who switched from Hebrew Senior Life’s chief nursing officer and vice president of patient care services to the Lunder CareForce Institute’s executive vice president last week. “We don’t want to just solve it just for our own needs.”
The secret, she says, is finding individuals who are motivated and are filled with compassion. Students will undergo paid six-week nurse-aide training periods, and might not necessarily think of themselves as aide-candidates when first approached.
They could be high school students, under- or unemployed individuals, military veterans, parents returning to the workforce, or many others who may thrive with steady caregiving employment, noted Retalic, an award-winning longtime educator.
“If we can create some kind of training option that produces the most amazing students when they are done, students who are motivated and accountable, who really want to make a difference, then we need to be able to lead that way nationally,” she said.
“You can’t teach compassion. You can’t teach motivation. But when you have those two things, you pretty much can teach any other skill set,” she added. “We believe that. We’ve seen that time and time again … They flourish. They thrive.”
Listen in to hear Retalic explain the genesis of the Lunder CareForce Institute, how it will work and the way officials will flex to create a thriving program to produce thousands of high-quality caregivers over the next decade.
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27min
March 20, 2025 Growth of HCBS has spurred new research areas, McKnight’s Pinnacle Award winner says
The expansion of home- and community-based services has been an important milestone in the tenure of Margaret McDonald, associate vice president for the Center for Home Care Policy and Research at VNS Health. More work needs to be done to enforce the Omstead decision, a landmark case that found that people with disabilities have a right to receive supports in the community under certain conditions, said McDonald, one of this year’s McKnight’s Pinnacle Award winners. On the week of the 2025 Pinnacle Awards event, McDonald talked to McKnight’s Home Care for a Newsmakers podcast about HCBS and her research.
Notes: In her role at VNS Health, Margaret McDonald works on conducting investigations to improve home- and community-based services (HCBS) and oversees the administrative functions of the Center for Home Care Policy and Research. Some of the center’s current research focuses on speech recognition to find out if audio recordings can be translated to help reduce the burden of caregiver documentation and explore whether the data collected can identify people who have early-onset of cognitive impairment. The rebalancing of long-term services and supports to HCBS and away from institutions means HCBS has to staff properly, she said. It also means HCBS needs to implement evidence-based practices of care in the home. Physician and nurse practitioner oversight may limit the move toward advanced services, such as hospital-at-home, into the home, she said. The federal government’s move to cut scientific research may affect the center’s work. But she is hoping that since her research informs clinical practice and healthcare policy including developing strategies to reduce rehospitalizations and delay nursing home admissions that the center will continue to receive support for her work.
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Show contributors:
McKnight’s Home Care Editor Liza Berger; Margaret McDonald, Associate VP for Center for Home Care Policy and Research, VNS Health
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17min
March 19, 2025 Assisted living’s value proposition
During Argentum’s recent Public Policy Institute in Washington, DC, Senior Vice President of Public Policy Maggie Elehwany and Vice President of Government Relations Paul Williams discussed Argentum’s legislative priorities for the 119th Congress, as well as updates to its public policy paper highlighting the value of assisted living.
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19min
March 18, 2025 ‘The capital will be there,’ skilled nursing investment expert vows
Investors in the seniors housing and care space have always seemed to make skilled nursing a second-thought customer. Now, however, the demographics have become so positive, even skilled nursing is enjoying more time in the spotlight — and it should for a long time to come.
That’s according to Bill Kauffman, a senior principal at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, who keeps a close eye on skilled nursing matters.
“The optimism is certainly here, for sure,” he told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News Executive Editor James M. Berklan at the recent NIC spring conference in San Diego. “Especially over the next 10 years.”
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has traditionally been a strong capital provider for skilled nursing operators, Kauffman noted. But now that most major pandemic concerns have subsided, real estate investment trusts — including public ones — are also becoming more active.
With interest rates remaining high, the cost of capital remains the big question mark, Kauffman explained. But, he quickly added, he thinks “it’s just a matter of time” before skilled nursing funders take advantage and build more to accommodate the historic crush of baby boomers.
“You have a supply and demand situation for private pay seniors housing and have a supply and demand situation for skilled nursing — and they’re both positive,” he explained.
Listen in to hear more on what Kauffman thinks the key factors are and what moves providers must make to get more capital — and what they must spend at least some of it on to succeed.
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9min
March 06, 2025 Franchise model meets assisted living
Esther Cromwell founded the first Haven Family Care Home in 2005 after realizing her passion for older adults while helping a widowed neighbor. She began researching what goes into senior care facilities and realized more could be done. Today, Haven Family Care is Avendelle Assisted Living, with 18 locations in North Carolina and Virginia, serving as a bridge between home and skilled nursing care.
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14min
February 24, 2025 Too much of a good thing? How to avoid the tech trap and prevent staff burnout
In this episode of the Reimagining Senior Living and Long-Term Care series, Jim sits down with Allison Rainey, Head of Nursing and Clinical Informatics at MatrixCare, to discuss a side of technology that often gets overlooked–when is it too much? While technology plays a critical role in supporting staff, too many disconnected systems, overwhelming amounts of data, and inefficient workflows can lead to staff burnout rather than relief.
Allison shares insights on how to ensure technology is truly supporting caregivers–from selecting solutions that integrate seamlessly into workflows to continuously evaluating whether systems are helping or hindering care teams. She also highlights strategies to prevent information overload to ensure data is actionable rather than adding to unnecessary complexity.
Tune in to hear practical strategies for avoiding the “Tech Trap” and ensuring technology remains a tool for support–not another burden on staff.
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24min
February 13, 2025 MedPAC takes long view of Medicare program, member Konetzka explains
R. Tamara Konetzka, PhD, the Louis Block Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Chicago, has been studying the intersection of Medicaid home- and community-based services (HCBS) and Medicare. Her research has found that when dual eligibles use Medicaid HCBS they are more likely to use home health versus skilled nursing facilities after hospitalizations. Konetzka also is fascinated by the idea that community-initiated home health serves as a frontier for a long-term care benefit. Other areas of research for Konetzka are Medicare Advantage. She’d like to examine the use of supplemental benefits, but there is not much data available on the use of them. She speculates that the Trump administration will have a hands-off approach to MA and likely will not expand funding for HCBS.

Follow us on social media:
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21min
February 04, 2025 Mid-stream shift: Trump team to weigh unfinished Medicare Advantage coverage rules, program’s future
The Biden administration over the last three years spearheaded efforts to rein in Medicare Advantage plans’ use of prior authorizations to deny care and cut short coverage for nursing homes.
But at the end, it also left some pretty substantial decisions on the table for the incoming Trump team — seen by many as pro-Medicare Advantage.
In this episode, Nicole Fallon, vice president of integrated services and managed care for LeadingAge, breaks down what we know about the future of MA.
First up: What happens to updated rules for MA plans proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in November? They called for more limits on artificial tools and automated denials of care, strategies that a 2024 Senate report found were being employed frequently to cut off access to post-acute services, particularly in nursing homes.
What happens next with those proposals is unknown, says Fallon, noting that such policy updates are not required annually, although payment updates (also still pending approval for 2026) are.
Trump’s new team at CMS could allow them to flounder and issue its own proposal (or not) for 2027. Of broader concern, however, is whether members of Congress and patients will be able to keep pressure on the federal government to adopt further improvements as some Trump appointees embrace the idea of growing MA even faster.
“Our hope is that both Congress and the administration really recognize that, first we need to kind of shore up those foundational issues — like access to care, enforcement of the rules, some greater transparency and data collection and really being good stewards of those Medicare trust fund dollars — before we engage in that debate about whether MA for all is really the right strategic direction,” Fallon says in this episode hosted by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News Senior Editor Kimberly Marselas.
Listen in to hear Fallon’s current expectations and more about what the change in administration could mean for addressing more challenging MA reimbursement concerns.
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23min
January 30, 2025 Mastering practitioner efficiency: Overcoming challenges and embracing innovation
In this podcast episode, we dive deep into the world of practitioner efficiency and explore practical strategies for maintaining and enhancing it within your practice group. Laurie Bergeron, VP Product Management, PointClickCare, and Darcy Koehn, Chief Population Health Officer, Peak Healthcare, discuss specific strategies and tools, and the crucial role technology plays in streamlining workflows.
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14min

FAQs about McKnight's Podcast:

How many episodes does McKnight's Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 310 episodes available.

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