MediCaring Communities: Preface

This initiative and book owe much to many contributors and well-wishers. I am grateful to those who tested some of the elements, provided ideas, and supported the cause. Altarum Institute’s Center for Elder Care and Advanced Illness generated the team that worked so hard to get the details right, and that team includes Elizabeth Blair, Jade Gong, Jim Lee, Anne Montgomery, Les Morgan, Judith Peres, and Holly Stanley. Altarum’s President and CEO, Lincoln Smith, and its Board of Trustees have been stalwart and encouraging supporters. The Milbank Foundation and The Lawrence & Rebecca Stern Family Foundation provided critically important funding. The Retirement Research Foundation funded some of our work on care planning. Many colleagues have read and commented on various facts and proposals, and we hope that many more will help polish and test the proposals. This book is being self-published on the internet and in hard copy so that it is easy to improve as we all learn more. Please go to medicaring.org to join in the commentary. Together we can build on the opportunity to have what we most need and want in our futures as old people.

We have published some of this material in professional journals, aiming to spread the concepts and engender advice and criticism.[1][2] We have registered the trademark “MediCaring®” in order to protect it from commercial use by others and thus to have it available to mark this reform agenda. We do not otherwise intend to restrict the use of the term.

References

[1] (Lynn and Montgomery 2015)

[2] (Montgomery and Lynn 2014)