Sunday, December 13, 2009

Christmas

I just attended my 6th LSA Christmas party in five days. Eating my way across the state for a good cause! Today was the Lutheran Home at Trinity Oaks (Salisbury) annual party for residents, their families, staff and their families. They had a near capacity crowd spread out in the main dining room and the chapel/great room. Entertainment and a huge buffet spread in each room. Lutheran Home at TO is the 3rd LSA facility, begun in 1976. Bill Johnson and his team have created a real community where care is resident centered, all staff are valued as full members of the team, and where families and visitors feel right at home. They have worked hard to create a customer service mentality, and it shows. Good example today: staff and families served every resident before serving themselves!

Welcome to LSA

Lutheran Services for the Aging has been very interested in technology for many years. Almost 20 years ago, LSA began computerizing its facilities for efficiency and improvement. That has led to today's initiatives to put LSA in the forefront of technology. LSA is not quite halfway through implementation of completely electronic medical records in all of its facilities. We've come a long way and have a long way to go.

Social networking was a natural fit and has been of great interest. I was hounded into twittering a few months back. I was not as interested in twittering to outside people, as I was in finding a new, fast way to communicate with staff at every level throughout our organization. We have grown into a 9 location organization serving over 1,100 residents/clients with over 1,100 staff members. It's getting more and more difficult to communicate with so many people spread so far. And you understand the issues surrounding communications getting filtered through so many layers.

Twitter has been a way for me to talk directly to our staff, mainly about all the good things going on in LSA. Feel free to join us on twitter at TedGoinsforLSA.

Twitter has been good for me. It makes me get the point across in just a few words. But as you can see, I like to talk and explain. I can do that through a blog. So with that explanation, we will begin communicating in a new way, and see where it takes us.