Sagepoint Senior Living Services was selected as the 2017 Chamber Non-Profit of the Year by the Charles County Chamber of Commerce. This award recognizes a Charles County Chamber organization that exemplifies high standards of ethics in public service. As a non-profit organization founded more than 40 years ago, Sagepoint is an organization dedicated to helping older adults age well and ensuring that families feel at peace knowing their loved one is thriving in a safe, nurturing environment. Sagepoint has built strong relationships with local health providers, faith organizations and community resources to provide a continuum of the best care for our senior residents. Sagepoint is uniquely able to reinvest their resources into better serving our residents and community rather than for-profit investors.
VP of Development Joyce Riggs remarks, “We are very thrilled to be chosen as the 2017 Charles County Chamber of Commerce’s Non-Profit of the Year! As the only non-profit provider of senior services in Charles County, we work hard to be the trusted provider of care and resources for seniors and their families throughout their journey.”
We would like to give a BIG thank you to the Town of La Plata for awarding our resident, Joanne Ellison, a $500 grant for the beautification of our grounds at Sagepoint Gardens! We would also like to thank the Town staff and the girl scout troop that came out to help make this all possible <3
Sagepoint Senior Living Services is delighted to announce the hiring of Joyce Riggs as Vice President of Development. Riggs began her employment with Sagepoint Senior Living Services on Wednesday, September 13, 2017.
As Vice President of Development, Riggs will be responsible for providing overall leadership in the development of Sagepoint’s Foundation, including its strategic direction, planning, developing, and maintaining a comprehensive fundraising program on behalf of the organization.
“I am pleased to advise Joyce Riggs has joined the Sagepoint team,” remarks Bill Holman, President/CEO for Sagepoint Senior Living Services. “Riggs’ experience in development and community relations will be a valuable asset to our team as we work to develop our foundation to further support seniors and their families throughout Southern Maryland.”
Riggs brings to Sagepoint Senior Living Services years of experience in development and community relations. Prior to joining the Sagepoint team, Riggs spent more than 9 years as the Director of Community Development and Planning where she managed the hospital’s marketing, community health and communications. In addition to her role at the University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center, Riggs also held several positions at the former Civista Medical Center to include Director of the Women’s Health Center.
Markets, He Wrote: How Economic Performance Shapes Retirement by Anirban Basu
When: Wednesday, September 13th from 6:30 – 8:00 pm
Where: Waldorf Jaycees- 3090 Crain Highway, Waldorf, MD 20601
RSVP: http://bit.ly/RetirementEconomics (Though the event is free, we ask that you RSVP so that we can plan accordingly. The first 50 to register will receive a free copy of The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement by Hans Scheil.)
Have you established your financial goal for retirement? If you haven’t, you are hardly alone. Only forty one percent of workers have even attempted to determine how much they will require in savings to retire comfortably. Many of those who have tried to figure this out are just guessing, or so it would seem. Anirban has more on this story.
Markets, He Wrote: How Economic Performance Shapes Retirement is the fourth of Sagepoint’s Community Education Series. The purpose of this series is to help educate members of the Southern Maryland community on a variety of topics related to healthcare and aging. We hope that you will benefit from this informative session and find it useful for you and your family.
About Anirban Basu
Anirban Basu is Chairman & CEO of Sage Policy Group, Inc., an economic and policy consulting firm headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland with offices in Pennsylvania and Indonesia. The firm provides strategic analytical services to energy suppliers, law firms, medical systems, government agencies, and real estate developers among others.
He currently lectures at Johns Hopkins University in Global Strategy. He has also taught international economics, urban economics, micro- and macroeconomics at Hopkins.
In both 2007 and 2016, the Daily Record newspaper selected Mr. Basu as one of Maryland’s 50 most influential people. The Baltimore Business Journal named him one of the region’s 20 most powerful business leaders in 2010.
Mr. Basu earned his B.S. in Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1990. He earned his Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and his Master’s in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. His Juris Doctor was earned at the University Of Maryland School Of Law.
Sponsor
Sagepoint Senior Living Services is pleased to announce that it has received a donation of $1,256.43 from the Welburn Organization which operates the two McDonald’s in La Plata and one in Waldorf. Sagepoint was selected as the McCafe for a Cause recipient for the month of May and this donation is the result of proceeds from coffee sales each Monday during that month.
The funds received will support our activities program which is responsible for trips and other activities aimed at ensuring the highest quality of life possible for all of our residents. One of the activities planned that will be funded by this donation will be a resident trip to the aquarium!
“As a non-profit organization, we rely greatly on the generosity of community partners such as McDonalds to provide our residents with experiences that improve their quality of life,” remarks Activities Director Erin Johnson. “This donation from the Welburn Organization will allow us to continue improving the lives of older adults and for that we are so very thankful!”
In honor of #ThankfulThursday, we would like to celebrate our advisory committee member Barbara Stepura on being selected as our Sagepoint Star Pen Distributor Champion. Barbara consistently distributes Sagepoint pens throughout the community and, in fact, has distributed over 3,000 total pens so far!
With our recent name change from Charles County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center to Sagepoint Senior Living Services back in January of 2015, name recognition and branding is a priority of ours. It does not go unnoticed and is very much appreciated when an individual volunteers their time to help us raise awareness. Thank you Barbara for being a Sagepoint Star!
Sagepoint Senior Living Services’ Pharmacy Bag Marketing campaign earned a 2017 Gold Aster Award in the national competition that recognizes excellence in healthcare marketing and advertising. Sagepoint’s mannequin challenge video, viewable here: https://youtu.be/HjzIX129f9o, earned a 2017 Silver Aster Award.
Director of Marketing Kelsey Pearson remarks, “We are very honored to again receive national recognition for our marketing efforts here at Sagepoint! We work hard to communicate our services to families in need throughout Southern Maryland and these awards speak to the success of our marketing efforts.”
In 2017, the Aster Awards received nearly 3,000 entries from hospitals, health systems, nonprofit public health organizations, and advertising/PR firms around the United States. All entries were reviewed by a panel of industry experts and were scored on multiple criteria against similar-sized organizations in their specific groups and categories.
Awards were issued for entries that received top marks from judges placing them in the top 16% of the nation for advertising excellence. Judging criteria included creativity, layout and design, functionality, message effectiveness, production quality and overall appeal.
Sagepoint Senior Living Services is pleased to announce that, as a sign of our commitment to providing excellent, person-centered care for persons living with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia, our staff are participating in CARES® Dementia Training and will earn Alzheimer’s Association essentiALZ and essentiALZ Plus Certifications. We will be posting our progress toward employee participation goals in the main lobby.
Residential care staff often have limited opportunities to attend face-to-face dementia training. When all staff share a care philosophy and approach to persons living with dementia, continuity of care improves. The goal of the pilot program from the state Alzheimer’s Council is to determine the feasibility of online training to enhance training in and adoption of dementia care best practices in Maryland. Sagepoint Senior Living Services is the first skilled nursing community in Maryland to participate in this program.
Sagepoint has long committed itself to providing services delivered with clinical excellence, in a comfortable and caring environment, for all community members, including those living with dementia. Staff will complete 10 modules of education which cover Dementia Basics (Alzheimer’s and Dementia, Understanding Behavior, Communication, and Person-centered Care) and Advanced Dementia Care (Making a Connection, Eating Well, Recognizing Pain, Minimizing Falls, Rethinking Wandering, Minimizing and Eliminating Restraints).
“With the CARES online dementia training program, we seek to offer training with a focus on person-centered dementia care. We are looking at all employees to participate in this endeavor,” said Hope Dweik, RN, BSN, MA, Sagepoint’s Staff Educator. “As the first skilled nursing community in Maryland to participate in this pilot program, we are helping to pave the way for cutting-edge levels of dementia care for residents in long-term care, assisted living, and rehabilitation communities.”
About CARES® Dementia Training Programs
HealthCare Interactive is addressing the growing national crisis of memory loss, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease by developing the most innovative set of training products for family members and professional caregivers available in the marketplace today. HCI’s CARES Dementia Basics and CARES Dementia Advanced Care online training programs qualify individuals for Alzheimer’s Association essentiALZ certification.
About Alzheimer’s Association essentiALZ® and essentiALZ® Plus Certification
Alzheimer’s Association essentiALZ and essentiALZ Plus certification programs recognize an individual’s knowledge of recommended dementia-care practices. Anyone who fulfills the prerequisite training requirements is eligible to take the essentiALZ certification exam and become certified.
When Dr. Christopher Callahan examines older patients, he often hears a similar refrain.
“I’m tired, doctor. It’s hard to get up and about. I’ve been feeling kind of down, but I know I’m getting old and I just have to live with it.”
This fatalistic stance relies on widely-held but mistaken assumptions about what constitutes “normal aging.”
In fact, fatigue, weakness and depression, among several other common concerns, aren’t to-be-expected consequences of growing older, said Callahan, director of the Center for Aging Research at Indiana University’s School of Medicine.
Instead, they’re a signal that something is wrong and a medical evaluation is in order.
“People have a perception, promulgated by our culture, that aging equals decline,” said Dr. Jeanne Wei, a geriatrician who directs the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
“That’s just wrong,” Wei said. Many older adults remain in good health for a long time and “we’re lucky to live in an age when many remedies are available.”
Of course, peoples’ bodies do change as they get on in years. But this is a gradual process. If you suddenly find your thinking is cloudy and your memory unreliable, if you’re overcome by dizziness and your balance is out of whack, if you find yourself tossing and turning at night and running urgently to the bathroom, don’t chalk it up to normal aging.
Go see your physician. The earlier you identify and deal with these problems, the better. Here are four common concerns that should spark attention — only a partial list of issues that can arise:
Fatigue. You have no energy. You’re tired all the time.
Don’t underestimate the impact: Chronically weary older adults are at risk of losing their independence and becoming socially isolated.
Nearly one-third of adults age 51 and older experience fatigue, according to a 2010 study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. (Other estimates are lower.) There are plenty of potential culprits. Medications for blood pressure, sleep problems, pain and gastrointestinal reflux can induce fatigue, as can infections, conditions such as arthritis, an underactive thyroid, poor nutrition and alcohol use.
All can be addressed, doctors say. Perhaps most important is ensuring that older adults remain physically active and don’t become sedentary.
“If someone comes into my office walking at a snail’s pace and tells me ‘I’m old; I’m just slowing down,’ I’m like no, that isn’t right,” said Dr. Lee Ann Lindquist, a professor of geriatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“You need to start moving around more, get physical therapy or occupational therapy and push yourself to do just a little bit more every day.”
Appetite loss. You don’t feel like eating and you’ve been losing weight.
This puts you at risk of developing nutritional deficiencies and frailty and raises the prospect of an earlier-than-expected death. Between 15 and 30 percent of older adults are believed to have what’s known as the “anorexia of aging.”
Physical changes associated with aging — notably a reduced sense of vision, taste and smell, which make food attractive — can contribute. So can other conditions: decreased saliva production (a medication-induced problem that affects about one-third of older adults); constipation (affecting up to 40 percent of seniors); depression; social isolation (people don’t like to eat alone); dental problems; illnesses and infections; and medications (which can cause nausea or reduced taste and smell).
If you had a pretty good appetite before and that changed, pay attention, said Dr. Lucy Guerra, director of general internal medicine at the University of South Florida.
Treating dental problems and other conditions, adding spices to food, adjusting medications and sharing meals with others can all make a difference.
Depression. You’re sad, apathetic and irritable for weeks or months at a time.
Depression in later life has profound consequences, compounding the effects of chronic illnesses such as heart disease, leading to disability, affecting cognition and, in extreme cases, resulting in suicide.
A half century ago, it was believed “melancholia” was common in later life and that seniors naturally withdrew from the world as they understood their days were limited, Callahan explained. Now, it’s known this isn’t so. Researchers have shown that older adults tend to be happier than other age groups: only 15 percent have major depression or minor variants.
Late-life depression is typically associated with a serious illness such as diabetes, cancer, arthritis or stroke; deteriorating hearing or vision; and life changes such as retirement or the loss of a spouse. While grief is normal, sadness that doesn’t go away and that’s accompanied by apathy, withdrawal from social activities, disturbed sleep and self-neglect is not, Callahan said.
With treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy and anti-depressants, 50 to 80 percent of seniors can expect to recover.
Weakness. You can’t rise easily from a chair, screw the top off a jar, or lift a can from the pantry shelf.
You may have sarcopenia — a notable loss of muscle mass and strength that affects about 10 percent of adults over the age of 60. If untreated, sarcopenia will affect your balance, mobility and stamina and raise the risk of falling, becoming frail and losing independence.
Age-related muscle atrophy, which begins when people reach their 40s and accelerates when they’re in their 70s, is part of the problem. Muscle strength declines even more rapidly — slipping about 15 percent per decade, starting at around age 50.
The solution: exercise, including resistance and strength training exercises and good nutrition, including getting adequate amounts of protein. Other causes of weakness can include inflammation, hormonal changes, infections and problems with the nervous system.
Watch for sudden changes. “If you’re not as strong as you were yesterday, that’s not right,” Wei said. Also, watch for weakness only on one side, especially if it’s accompanied by speech or vision changes.
Taking steps to address weakness doesn’t mean you’ll have the same strength and endurance as when you were in your 20s or 30s. But it may mean doctors catch a serious or preventable problem early on and forestall further decline.
[wp_blog_designer]
9375 Chesapeake St, Suite 211,
La Plata, MD 20646
P: 301.276.0130
Equal Housing Opportunity