Improving Care for the Nation’s Elderly Focus of SCAN Health Plan’s 11th Annual Leadership and Management in Geriatrics Conference

LONG BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Healthcare professionals from the clinical and academic settings will join together in a unique conference March 8-9 in Long Beach to explore better ways to care for America’s aging society. The 11^th annual Leadership and Management in Geriatrics (LMG) Conference is expressly designed to equip professionals with the tools needed to change behavior in ways that lead to a better patient experience.

“We encourage participants to think outside of the box and consider novel approaches to creating and managing geriatric clinics, practices and services”

“Most medical school graduates enter the profession without the benefit of any background in finance, business or leadership; and this knowledge gap quickly becomes painfully evident,” said Dan Osterweil, M.D., course chair of the conference, medical director of SCAN Health Plan and professor of medicine at UCLA. “So, too, physicians and nurses in established practices need to keep abreast of the business side of healthcare as the environment undergoes massive changes. This two-day conference is vitally important to their own success and toward helping them serve patients better.”

The LMG Conference affords participants the opportunity to spend time in an intensive and highly interactive setting with leaders in the field of geriatric medical management. There attendees will work in small, collaborative groups with faculty mentors to develop and implement action plans in a worksite-specific quality improvement management/leadership challenge. Participants will then work on a one-to-one basis with a mentor post-conference to implement their action plans.

“We encourage participants to think outside of the box and consider novel approaches to creating and managing geriatric clinics, practices and services,” said Dr. Osterweil. “Given the fact that in two decades one out of every five Americans will be 65 or older, it is imperative that we create models where geriatric care is more efficient and less costly. To do that healthcare professionals need to hone their leadership and management skills, and that’s what this conference is all about.”

The two-day LMG conference, held at the Hilton Long Beach, is sponsored by SCAN Health Plan in collaboration with the UCLA Academic Geriatric Resource Center and the California Geriatric Education Center.

As a health plan dedicated exclusively to seniors and others on Medicare, SCAN’s sponsorship of the conference is part of its ongoing commitment to better understand the aging process and advocating on behalf of the needs of seniors. In addition to the LMG Conference, SCAN offers healthcare professionals an array of online courses through its website – www.scancme.com – and also provides clinical guidelines, assessment tools and literature regarding common geriatric medical conditions.

For 35 years SCAN Health Plan has been focusing exclusively on the unique needs of seniors and others on Medicare. The company currently has nearly 145,000 members in California and Arizona. Further information may be obtained at scanhealthplan.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/scanhealthplan.

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