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ive the following question some thought: Would you live in your long-term care facility? If your answer is “No,” chances are your facility has a long way to go in providing the type of care and services that make residents feel as though they have a say in the rhythm of their daily lives. In this month’s cover article, Mary Tellis-Nayak, MSN, MPH, pegs this type of “person-centered care” as the future of quality, particularly with the Baby Boomers poised to enter the eldercare market. Among the standards of the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) for providing this caliber of care: maximizing residents’ choices, building strong relationships between residents and caregivers, and collecting and analyzing feedback from all stakeholders (ie, residents, their family members, and staff).
       Also included in this issue is news on steps being taken by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide beneficiaries with access to coverage through consumer-directed health plans—with features similar to health savings accounts (HSAs)—in Medicare Advantage programs in 2007, as well as articles on the following topics: a clinical review of wound bed preparation, zinc’s role in health and disease, the team approach to food and nutrition, the growing threat of workplace violence, the story of one long-term care facility’s fight against urinary tract infections, and the importance of educating fellow staff on the Miminum Data Set (MDS). On behalf of the staff of ECPN, I hope you enjoy this issue. As always, thank you for reading.

Looking Forward

       The staff of ECPN is currently devising an editorial calendar for 2007, fleshing out ideas for articles on the many clinical and financial aspects of long-term care, from skin and wound care and incontinence to information systems and wandering/fall management. As always, we are eager to hear from you, our readers, on which topics you would like to see receive more coverage in 2007, and we are always on the lookout for new writers to bring a fresh perspective to the journal. If you or a colleague are interested in submitting an article for publication in ECPN, please feel free to contact me or view our writer’s guidelines online at www.extendedcarenews.com/authors.cfm.