The 2017 OPTIMA Award winner for Excellence in Resident-Focused 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 quality resident programs.

Congratulations to St. Joseph’s Rehabilitation and Residence, Portland, Maine, winner of the 2017 OPTIMA Award for Excellence in Resident-Focused Care, sponsored by Omnicare.

St. Joseph’s unusual intergenerational living program is tackling three causes at once: increasing resident engagement, curbing the labor shortage and training passionate young people on the fast track to careers in the field of senior care. The program has become a way for the facility to maintain its staff for quality care, while students view it as the internship of a lifetime.

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: Clinical , Executive Leadership , Leadership , Staffing , Training