Come on down.

AAHSA institute leader promises collaboration, independence

ROBYN I. STONE, PHD, SAYS HER FIRST tasks as head of a new policy institute will be to establish an advisory board and take other steps to ensure that it functions independently of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, the organization that hired her to get it off the ground.

Stone joined AAHSA in late June to run the Institute for the Policy Research on the Future of Long Term Care. Stone says the think tank may be renamed as its operations move forward.

"Robyn is a highly respected, objective researcher and has great credibility in the public policy and the academic realm[s]," said AAHSA President Len Fishman in a statement announcing her appointment.

Stone comes to the association from the International Longevity Center in New York City, where she was the executive director for about two years and where she oversaw a $5.5 million grant program to educate consumers about their Medicare choices. The grant program may be relocated to the AAHSA institute. She was formerly the deputy assistant secretary for disability, aging, and long term care policy at the Department of Health and Human Services, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, and a senior research director with Project HOPE in Washington, D.C.

Stone says she was excited about the opportunity to conduct research and policy studies about the type of long term care system America needs and wants, particularly because she believes no similar institute exists today. She hopes the institute will be able to focus the national debate, and discussions in the long term care industry, on matters other than the reimbursement and regulation battles that typically consume a trade association's energies.

"There are bits and pieces all around the country, but nothing really pulls it together and focuses on building a framework for the future," Stone says. "The areas I want to focus on are designing sustainable long term care delivery systems and preparing the work force" to care for the looming senior-boom generation.

Over the next few months, Stone will explore funding sources, establish the institute as a separate, not-for-profit organization, and set up a board of directors, which she says could have 10 members.

"Our plan is to put together a national advisory board that meets the needs of a very diverse field, [representing] consumers, providers, the financing and regulatory community, and the clinical community," she says. The board will "really have to come together," she adds, to solve the bigger issues facing an aging population.

Stone joins Fishman as the second former government official to come to the association in recent months. The AAHSA board named Fishman, who had been commissioner of health for New Jersey, to its top post in February.