The 2017 OPTIMA Award winner for Excellence in Memory Care

The 2017 I Advance Senior Care OPTIMA Award votes are in! The independent judging panel studied this year’s record-breaking number of entries—more than in the past decade—and chose the best of the best in our inaugural Memory Care category.

Congratulations to our first winner of the OPTIMA Award for Excellence in Memory Care, sponsored by PointClickCare. Kudos to Issaquah Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Issaquah, Washington!

Even though almost half its residents have some level of cognitive decline, the 140-bed skilled nursing center reduced its use of antipsychotics for residents with dementia from nearly 34 percent to just 3.5 percent in less than two years. In our upcoming story, we’ll show you how they created a successful performance improvement plan to reduce unnecessary medications, improve resident quality of life, and train staffers ways to assess behaviors.

The OPTIMA Award competition, now in its 21st year, is one of the industry’s only double-blind competitions. The judges do not know the identity of the submitting provider and can judge solely on the excellence and outcomes of the project. The external judging panel also is independent of the award sponsors and I Advance Senior Care magazine.

The editors of I Advance Senior Care will be traveling to the winning site in the next few weeks to learn more about the winning program and share their ideas with readers—so stay tuned for our in-depth story coverage coming soon on iadvanceseniorcare.com and as the cover story of our Fall print issue.


Topics: Alzheimer's/Dementia , Executive Leadership , Leadership