The Internet comes to the nursing home.

At Cedar Lake Health Care Center we are among the estimated 30 million (a number which is expected to double in 1996 users of the Internet. It has become an integral element in our management of this 415-bed skilled nursing home that is one part of the multi-facility senior-care organization Cedar Campuses of West Bend Wisconsin. Access to the Internet has made it possible for Cedar Campuses to receive a wealth of information and benefit -- and all we needed to get on the Net was a personal computer, a modem, a communications program, and a phone line. Once we were on, the "Net" quickly became a tool aiding our efforts in research, communication, purchasing, public relations, fundraising, employee recruitment, social work and activities.

The Internet's exponential growth is being fueled by the vast quantities of information to be found on it. No matter what an individual's interests, the Internet is a storehouse of data. Using the Internet for research, for. example, is not difficult. The emergence two years ago of the World Wide Web, a "graphical interface subnetwork," has automated the once daunting process of keyboarding long, arcane strings of query commands, and has made the Net "user-friendly" by allowing information to be displayed in graphical "pages."

Popular Web-browser software, such as Mosaic or Netscape, has made searching for information as simple as typing in key words, and then letting a "search engine," such as InfoSeek, Web Crawler, or Lychos, produce a list of documents containing those words. Users can then download the listed articles to their computer or reproduce them on their printer. It is not uncommon to find hundreds of articles per search -- a wealth of information previously unavailable to nursing home staff.

Medline, a subscription service accessed through the Net, gives nursing home physicians and medical staff access to the world's finest medical libraries. Staff uses go well beyond the medical, though. Recently, for example, our chaplain searched the Internet for information on the concepts of "hope" and "courage." She found hundreds of articles and pieces of data to be used for subsequent sermon references and newsletter topics. Nursing home social workers can find help and support on the Internet. A site called Griefnet brings together people who have recently experienced the loss of a loved one.

One of the Internet's best features is its ability to enhance nursing home communications. Electronic or "E"-mail lets us transmit a message from one of our computers to someone else's computer anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. It makes no difference what kind of computer or operating system is involved, because the Internet's TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/Internet protocol) communications standards function as a universal language able to be understood by all computers. The Macintosh computer of a nursing home in New Zealand can exchange information with our IBM in Wisconsin as quickly and easily as if they were identical IBM clones in adjacent offices connected by a local area network. E-mail allows you to send a specific note to one user, copy it to others, or electronically distribute a form letter to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.

Newsgroups are computerized bulletin boards originally developed for posting notices and news items. Now they are used primarily for live group discussions on a particular subject. A newsgroup such as AGING explores the humanistic aspects of aging. The American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) sponsors an Internet link, called "AAHSA Online," which allows members to be in constant touch with AAHSA issues, updates, and activities. The Internet is also a great place for administrators to share problems, concerns, and questions.

Mail lists are a combination of E-mail and newsgroups. You subscribe to a mail list based on a specific area of interest, then every newsgroup posting written by people responding to that topic is routed automatically to your E-mail box. The result is you don't have to log on to the newsgroup looking for information; it comes to you. Mail list that nursing homes may find interesting include Maxlife (positive and healthy lifestyles) and Elders (pen pals for older adults).

At Cedar Lake we use the Internet to seek information on available grant opportunities. What used to take a staffer hours and hours of work at the Marquette University library in Milwaukee can now be done on the Internet in moments. This is just one example of how the Internet saves us time and money.

Another way in which we use the Internet is as a resource to sponsor support groups for victim and their families of Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, stroke and visual impairment. Using the Internet, group leaders are able to get current information on the progress of research for cures, or to put victim in touch with each other, or to show the availability of adaptive equipment.

The latter assists our facility directly, as well. With resident acuity care levels increasing in all nursing homes, and with greater emphasis being placed on rehabilitation, there is a growing need to locate adaptive equipment. By perusing the "Disabilities Mall" in Netscape's "Galleria," we can study a wide variety of adaptive equipment and order it over the Internet.

Hiring staff is a real challenge for many nursing homes, and ours is no exception. Posting job openings on the Internet helps with this considerably. In cooperation with schools and chamber of commerce businesses in West Bend, a CareerNet page was created upon which Cedar Lake Health Care Center lists its logo, mission statement, descriptions of available jobs, and their starting pay. Not only are people in West Bend and nearby Milwaukee aware of our needs, but job seekers from anywhere in the world can find us on the Internet.

We have even put our own "homepage" on the Internet. A homepage is an Internet site that can be visited electronically by anyone who is curious, and to which additional pages of documents can be linked. Our homepage allows our public relations staff to provide a wide variety of information about Cedar Campuses to anyone who wishes to read it. We are at work on creating an Internet brochure to link to our homepage which will allow people to "tour" our facilities.

We see the Internet as more than a tool for staff, however -- we believe it can be a "window on the world" for our residents. About three dozen of our residents have been trained to use computers, and for them we have a complete computerized system on wheels. Internet is not in play, yet; currently games are the most popular use to which our residents put computers, and they find the CD-ROM encydopedia valuable, as well. However, we hope to be able to provide Internet access to residents in the not too distant future. Our new Cedar Bay assisted living facility was built with each resident room wired with separate phone lines for modems. It won't be long before the Internet is a regular activity choice for nursing home residents.

The Net is transforming the world into a global village, and nursing homes need to wisely link staff and residents to the world of knowledge, communications, and entertainment which awaits them through the Internet.