Trilogy Seeks to Evolve Memory Care With New Center of Excellence 

Trilogy Health Services is launching a Memory Care Center of Excellence to improve dementia care.

Trilogy expects to open the center at a community in Warsaw, Indiana, in November. Trilogy Health Services is launching a Memory Care Center of Excellence to advance dementia support through a neuroscience-informed, person-focused approach.

The Center of Excellence will serve as a model for innovative memory support practices that build on retained abilities, current neuroscience, and meaningful community integration, according to Cara Skrypchuk, who is the vice president of the Memory Care Center of Excellence.

“Memory Care Center of Excellence is designed to develop what we call a gold standard dementia support model, and this is centered around the environment, staffing, a psychosocial focus, leadership, community integration and retained abilities,” Skrypchuk said. “The center will drive innovation and operational excellence within Trilogy.”

The new center will offer training, conduct public outreach and host memory care-related conferences in an effort to further improve memory care services across Trilogy’s memory care portfolio. Partnerships are also critical to this effort, Skrypchuk said. She highlighted existing partners including the Norton Neuroscience Institute, Sheffield University in England and the University of Louisville.

“The Memory Care Center of Excellence was created because we noticed there was a clear and growing gap in how dementia support has historically been approached,” Skrypchuk said. “Memory care has been driven by deficit-based, clinically dominant models, so a lot of times that focuses on decline and it completely forgets the human element in all of this.”

Trilogy’s memory care program relies on a memory care resident’s “retained abilities” and focuses on processing, comprehension, music and movement ultimately to help residents “feel purposeful” throughout their days.

An example might include a resident who retains their sense of smell and is reminded of their shower routine when presented with a familiar bar of soap they have used for many years, Skrypchuk said.  

Skrypchuk also shared how Trilogy is partnering with the University of Louisville’s music department to find ways of expanding music programming in memory care to help memory care residents build routines through musical cues. In a unique approach, Trilogy is also in contact with a host of older adults living with dementia, asking them for feedback on programming and bringing new ideas forward, Skrypchuk said.

The center will also help measure the effectiveness of programming and engagement in Trilogy memory care communities. The effort will also bring in academic, clinical and tech partners to shape and validate memory care pilot programs that could be rolled out across the company’s memory care communities, Skrypchuk said.

Trilogy is exploring whether it will apply for a Make America Healthy Again grant, with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to award up to 30 cooperative agreements spanning three years totaling $100 million, with a maximum of $3.3 million per grant recipient, according to senior living trade organization LeadingAge.

While medications today can sometimes slow the impact of dementia, the “over-medicalization” of memory care can have negative effects on residents, she added.

“We need to shift the balance from over-medicalization towards lifestyle strategies,” Skrypchuk said. “The other thing I think is really important that needs to change is the terms that we use in our industry.”

To that end, programming for memory care must remain meaningful and be based on a resident’s abilities, while using a person’s life stories in connecting with memory care residents, Skrypchuk said.

Memory care is currently in the middle of a “major shift” away from risk-averse, deficit-focused and medicalized models toward one that is rooted in neuroscience and a person’s existing abilities, Skrypchuk added.

“We want to offer data and outcomes that challenge our industry’s current approaches,” Skrypchuk said. “We want to raise expectations for what dementia support can and should be.”