My friend Bob Barkin asked me “How was the big summit?” At first I did not get what he was talking about. He had glanced at my blog and saw more than one Summit headline. Then I realized he thought all the summits I have written about lately was ONE summit. He thought it was one… significant… event… a summit.
But I had written about just some of the summits relating to my subjects lately
2011 mhealth summit,  Silvers Summit, Digital Health Summit, Care Innovations Summit to name a few.
It is good to know attention is coming to issues about which I care…BUT This won’t work.
We need to get down from the summit, down from the heady conversations, down into the valleys where you can see from one side to the other and figure out how to cross the divide. How to bridge the gaps, cross the barriers. We need to develop the base. Lay the foundation.
The clearest divide I see is between healthcare, like CMS, insurance, people talking reimbursements and social, home care, equipment and community services that rely on limited funds and private pay. These folks don’t attend the same summits. Think of the image at the top…not a lot of room on the summit! Without crossings we won’t get far solving the housing and care crises coming down the pike.
We need more attention to the details and connections, the every day, what works and what doesn’t. I’m not sure what we call it, but the real stuff doesn’t happen at the summits.
Louis Tenenbaum, one of the nation's leading authorities on aging in place, is the founder of HomesRenewed, a coalition of business, consumers and nonprofits, driving policy and investment to increase the number of age-friendly homes.