Gardant Management Solutions Earns Best of the Best Award for Political Advocacy Program

Gardant Management Solutions was presented with a top industry award for its Speaking Out for Supportive Living Program.

For the third time in the past four years, Gardant Management Solutions has received a Best of the Best Award from Argentum, formerly the Assisted Living Federation of America.

The award is a top industry honor that recognizes innovative programs and services that are creating the future of senior living.

Gardant was presented the 2016 Best of the Best Consumer Choice Award for its Speaking Out for Supportive Living Program, which is designed to protect consumer choice through multidisciplinary, year-round political advocacy for the Illinois Supportive Living program. The program is a model for affordable assisted living.

Rod Burkett, Gardant CEO, and Rick Banas, Vice President of Development and Positioning, accepted the award this week during Argentum’s Senior Living Executive Conference in Denver.

“This year’s nominations are a testament to the creativity, commitment and care that is currently shaping our industry,” said James Balda, Argentum President and CEO. The companies receiving Best of the Best Awards “are truly setting new standards in the industry for their peers to embrace and emulate.”

This is the sixth time a Gardant program has received Argentum’s Best of the Best Award or been selected as a Program to Spotlight:

  • 2015 Best of the Best Award: Family Engagement – The Caremerge Family Engagement App, which is utilized at all Gardant communities, helps improve resident transitions and ongoing communication between residents and their families.
  • 2014 Program to Spotlight: Collecting Data for Better Outcomes – Gardant partnered with Caremerge to provide better and more automated data collection to meet managed care quality measures and compliance needs.
  • 2013 Best of the Best Award: A Taste of the Future: The Next Generation Dining Menu – Gardant partnered with Eastern Illinois University to pilot the Eat Smart, Live Strong initiative. The program, which encourages residents to get at least 30 minutes of exercise and eat at least 3.5 cups of fruits and vegetables each day, has since expanded and is now offered at each of the 44 communities that Gardant manages.
  • 2013 Program to Spotlight: WoW Program: Encourating New Resident Engagement in the First 90 Days – Gardant’s WoW Program is based on helping residents adjust after moving into an assisted living community. The program focuses on staff and other residents delivering special personalized attention to engage new residents during their first 72 hours of residency.
  • 2010 Best of the Best Award: Leading the Way Leadership Training Program – Gardant created a program that helped develop and retain corporate-and-community-level leaders. The professional development initiative helped decrease the executive director turnover rate, led to a formal mentoring program for employees and served as a model for other companies.

“Our Speaking Out initiative is based on the understanding that the success of the Supportive Living Program here in Illinois is highly contingent on having strong political support in the legislative and administrative branches of government,” says Banas.

The Supportive Living Program is especially designed to benefit low-income seniors and adults with physical disabilities who need some help to maintain their independence but do not require licensed skilled nursing care. “It provides a wonderful alternative to a nursing home or to struggling alone at home,” Banas said.

Through the Speaking Out Program, each Gardant community receives a detailed guide on conducting a purpose-driven political advocacy effort in conjunction with the management company.

Gardant Management Solutions is the largest provider of assisted living in Illinois. It operates more than 40 assisted living, senior living and memory care communities in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, the Metro East area of St. Louis, and other locations in northern, central and southern Illinois.

The company also manages properties in Georgia and Indiana, ranking as the 14th largest provider of assisted living in the country, according to Senior Living Executive, a publication of Argentum.

For more information about Gardant Management Solutions or the assisted living, senior living and memory care communities the company operates, visit www.gardant.com or call 1-877-882-1495 toll-free.

Gardant Management Solutions has 20+ years of industry-acclaimed operational history in developing, managing and consulting for senior living, assisted living and memory care communities.