Business View Magazine - September 2015

94 Business View - September 2015 Business View - September 2015 95 the growing number of seniors that are just around the pike. The demands and expectations of these people will be very different than previous generations – they’ll have much higher expectations. We also antici- pate that people, as they stay in their own homes for as long as possible, will come into long-term care will much higher levels of need. We will keep people as long as possible in other settings, but by the time they come to us, they may be 95 years old (whereas 85 is the average now), and they may be really frail with mul- tiple conditions when they are admitted. BUSINESS VIEW: Talk about the overall membership in terms of your ability to engage them. What meth- ods have worked well? Events? Publications? Other forms of reaching out to them? And, overall, how en- gaged of a group do you think it is? Is it easy to get people on the same page and moved to action? RUBIN : It’s not so hard to get them on the same page, because they’re all doing similar work, so there’s a com- monality, but years ago, we would provide a lot more forums for people where they came in for educational sessions, and they had to because that was before the internet and webinars, of course. So, we, like many other associations, had to become more nimble. Peo- ple needed information more quickly, and we explored ways to keep abreast of the issues and what members needed to know. Now, we have, of course, moved into educational sessions delivered very quickly through our web-based services as well as conference calls. We’ve also created a web-based community, where members can post questions and get answers online. Even if a member is working at 1 in the morning and has a board presentation the next day, other members will respond as they see the questions. We also have a strong regional structure where people come together locally and meet, and I guess what surprises me now is, given all those vehicles for communication, there’s still a desire to meet in-person. BUSINESS VIEW: What goals do you have for the as- sociation in the next five years? And how do you ex- pect things will look differently than they do now? RUBIN: We’ll continue to provide leadership, but I think we’re going to need to be recommending what works to help provide the supports to people in the right place. There will be many more older people in the next few years and, I think a myriad of choices. It will be very difficult for people to know where to turn, where to go, who to trust, and we hope our members will continue to be seen as credible, trusted providers in the array of seniors’ services. Healthcare Healthcare