The Future of Managed Care

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 00:07
Hello and welcome to The Art of Aging part of the Abundant Aging podcast series from United Church Homes. On this show, we take a look at what it means to age in America and in other places around the world with positive and empowering conversations that challenge, encourage and inspire all to age with abundance. Today, we are pleased to welcome Airhart prey tower. Erhardt is President and CEO of cure source and industry leading multi state multi plane government sponsored health care organization that is truly reimagining the way health care can be delivered in this country. Erhardt joined care source in 2018, following his role as CEO of Horizon New Jersey health, which is the state’s largest Medicaid plan. This followed previous leadership positions at Aetna, WellCare health and United Health Group, so you know, he knows his way around healthcare. Erhardt is a dedicated champion of technology and innovation in long term care. He is also one of the highest read rated CEOs in the country by Glassdoor ranking number 20 and 2019 based on employee reviews, other recognitions and distinctions includes his receiving the Joy Wheeler Leadership Award by Medicaid health plans of America and 2018. And he currently serves on the board of HIP, America’s Health Insurance Plans. Welcome, Erhardt.

Erhardt Preitauer 01:27
Thank you, thank you for having me.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 01:29
Just a reminder that this podcast series is sponsored by United Church homes, Ruth Ross Parker center for abundant aging. To learn more about the center visit WWW DOT United Church homes.org backslash Parker dash center. So Erhardt as we get into this, you have such a distinctive career in healthcare, pay your space, what drives your passion here,

Erhardt Preitauer 01:54
It’s really a privilege, first of all privileged to be here, but also the opportunity to serve those who need a little extra help. And so the government sponsor, part of the pear world is what I’ve focused on over the last 20 or 25 years. And I often joke that one of my school buddies who works at Nestle is now and he gets to wake up and make chocolate bars. I get to wake up every day knowing that we’re having a positive impact on the communities that we’re serving and on the people that we’re serving. And I get to lead a mission oriented company that’s also really focused on trying to make that impact. So it’s something that drives my passion. But I’m also very grateful to be able to do what we do.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 02:45
And just to note that dark chocolate does improve our health. So I don’t want to discount that all completely. Can you describe the markets in which you operate? CareerSource primarily manages Medicaid programs on behalf of states is that right? Yeah.

Erhardt Preitauer 03:01
So you know, the way that I see this, we have these larger Medicaid contracts, and then there are Medicare contracts. And then there are marketplace contracts. And then there’s lots of other businesses that we’re in as well. So our big Medicaid contracts are in, you know, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Michigan. But with some of the other lines of business, we’re in a whole bunch of other states. But here’s what’s really exciting, is we have a number of opportunities that we are awaiting sort of answers from now on, sort of how they play through. So we are expecting probably over the next several months to be adding several more Medicaid states to our portfolio. And this is a big part of who we’re becoming in our mission and the differences that we’re making, the innovative approaches that we’re taking, and I’m excited because it’s all starting to become real. So it is a very exciting time for CareSource. I

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 04:04
I just want to slip something in here but Airhart because we assume that everyone who’s listening actually knows what Medicaid is. Can you just give a brief description? When we’re talking about Medicaid? Who are we talking about serving? That

Erhardt Preitauer 04:18
is a wonderful question, and frankly not that simple to answer. So in the United States, traditional Medicaid serves lower income folks and people that have a disability or aged at some point. So Medicaid serves a number of different populations. In the US, like I said, it’s probably around $700 billion. It’s a very big program. People a lot of times we’ll get it confused with medical and Medicare is primarily focused on folks that are 65 or older. So there can be someone who’s on Medicare 65 or older, but they may also have some type of a disability. So they may also qualify for Medicaid too. Hopefully that helps. That

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 05:17
helps immensely. And what brought that to mind is, several years ago, we welcomed a new individual who had been elected to the Ohio State Legislature to introduce him to our community. And this was post the time when the voting had happened for the state budget, we were having lunch. And all of a sudden, it occurred to me that this elected official who had just voted on the state budget did not know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, and he was not able to understand what we were talking about. So good, thank you for helping you thank you for helping Jeff to share them. So in the midst of that, we’ve got Medicare, we’ve got Medicaid, and then we also have this other word that starts with an M, that you’re not a stranger to at all, and that is managed care. So do you want to explain managed care, and how this is a holistic model of care and why you’re such a fan of it?

Erhardt Preitauer 06:15
Yeah, so here’s what managed care is, I’m gonna take those separately, here’s what managed care means. To me, the opposite of managed care is what’s called a fee for service. So in a fee for service world, that you kind of go out, you’re on your own, and you go to doctors, and there’s really very little coordination between your primary care provider and your specialist and the drugs that maybe both of them have prescribed, you’re sort of just on your own right, in a managed care environment, there is a much higher level of coordination between the different types of care that you may require. So personally, I would only be in a managed care environment, because I think having those elements of coordination is important. Think of drugs, right, you don’t want one doctor prescribing something but another doctor, he may, or she may prescribe something different. And the two sometimes don’t get a lot, it happens quite often, actually. But in the managed care environment, there’s a lot of mechanisms to sort of help avoid those types of situations from happening. And then there’s so within managed care, there’s then the concept of holistic care, right. And this is something that an organization like CareSource, with our heritage, and sort of our philosophy has been very focused on for a while. And so in short, holistic care is recognizing that we’ve got to address the whole person in order to be able to help someone achieve their greatest level of health. So what do I mean by that? Well, if you’re worried about having a roof over your head, it is very difficult to focus on getting a preventative screening that might find something that you’ll be very thankful that you got ahead of right. If you’re wondering where your next meal is coming from, you’re going to have a hard time focusing on making sure that you’re going to your primary care provider. Behavioral Health is something that is a very big conversation nowadays. And if you have some challenges around behavioral health, sometimes linked to substance use disorder is very difficult, right for you to focus on getting the care or the preventative care that you might require. And if you don’t address those, as we all know, then that preventative issue may become a significant issue. And not only does it wind up costing the system a lot more resources, but it’s a lower quality of life for that person in their family, which is really our primary focus. So hopefully, that gives a little overview of managed care. And at least for me, and for CareSource kind of what this notion of holistic care sort of means.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 09:16
So this makes logical sense to me. And I also know that there are a lot of people talking about the social determinants of health and that’s what you’re talking about housing, food, access to transportation, all of these things that aren’t directly medical care. It’s just, it’s a no-brainer that we should be thinking about all those things together. So what do you think that is? Why is this such a difficult concept? What is limiting this vision so far from really taking hold more broadly? In the industry and the inner country is at home at large?

Erhardt Preitauer 09:58
Okay, remind me again how much time we Yes, I know, it’s so important. It’s such an important question. And let me answer the question, but I’m going to focus maybe a little bit different. We, this is part of my frustration and part of our partnership. And what we’re doing is for so long, I challenge and this is gonna sound like a criticism. And it’s really not meant to be, we have a two, we’ve talked about the recognition of the importance of things like social determinants and all of those elements under that. But have we really done anything about it. And so when I took over leadership of CareSource, Keras, was has a rich history of actually already doing something about this. And that’s part of what I wanted to accentuate in the ranks worth is to say, all right, and there are many examples of this, that I have the privilege of getting to work on, let’s put our money, where our mouth is, let’s actually try to take what we’ve been talking about for a long time and not actually doing anything about it. And let’s do something about it. Let’s start bringing the elements of social determinants in with the elements of the provider world, right? In with the elements of the payer, well, let’s start bringing all of that together. We all know that there’s value to be created, we all know that, for the lives of the families, and the people that we serve, there is a great benefit about bringing these elements together. But no one’s really done it. And so it’s one of the many reasons I’m excited to be a part of CareSource. And to be partnered with amazing folks like United Church homes, because we’re doing something about it. And that is groundbreaking. You might say it’s unfortunate that in 2024, we’re finally breaking ground on something we’ve been talking about for 15 years. But hey, better late than never better. We’re super excited about where we’re going. Yeah,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 12:11
so just to full disclosure, explain a little bit more to our listeners, radiant Alliance, which is an organization which came together last year, which is United Church homes and mental health health care. United Church homes is a provider for 108 years, we have been providing care, and accompanying folks who are in later life and to their various needs. And we’re moving into an agreement with CareSource payers. And this is a subject to appropriate approvals and closing conditions at the time that we’re recording this. But we anticipate that rady and alliance will become an affiliate of CareSource. So raiding Alliance continues a managed clinical care model and a non clinical social determinants support model to help achieve the holistic model that you’re speaking of. So better late than never, here we go. Even as we’re waiting and final approval, we’re already making steps together. What are your hopes for this relationship.

Erhardt Preitauer 13:24
And the relationship, even as it stands today, is going to be a tremendous fit between all of the different organizations. But let me back up and go higher, a little bit higher level here. I, in my heart of hearts, believe that it is. It’s our moral obligation. We see it, we know how to challenge the system and to move this Ford. So we got to do something about it, and what we’re doing and how we’re bringing this together. And the different pilots that were already working on, are already starting to clearly demonstrate what I believe is the next generation of holistic care. And it doesn’t exist today. Not even close. And so as we begin to prove this out as we begin to drive quality as we begin to make people’s lives better as we begin to create value, even around being able to be more efficient with our resources, which again, these pilots are already starting to work and we’re already seeing it, it’s going to be tremendous, the ultimate goal right for us to really be able to have an impact and then start to be able to take that data and share that and making business cases that we all intuitively think or believe that is out there. So a business case of can we combine some of the dollars that support senior housing or low income housing with some of the dollars that support the health care, we can bring that together and create value, then demonstrate that and show the data behind it, then we start to be able to show and drive policy. And from a, one of the wonderful things about the organizations that you mentioned, and united for tones, hospice and us, the mission alignment could not be cleaner. And that’s one of the big, I think, elements to why this is going to work so well. But back to the mission piece, if we can make all of this work, and we will, and take it to the next generation of how we address and how we support our members. And then take that to really drive policy, the impact that we will have, is going to be tremendous, in that ultimately, that longer term policy impact element is what I’m so excited about. And, I applaud the bravery and the vision of some of the other leaders that I’m getting the opportunity to work together on. Because this is different. And I think maybe a little less than now. But a year ago, people were like, Okay, we get the concept of what you’re trying to do. But it’s a little out there. But now that it’s coming together, and now that we’re seeing these pilots start to work for seeing quality and the value. I think they’re starting to gain momentum, they’re starting to have a lot of excitement. But no one’s more excited than I am about this.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 16:36
I’m just going to add in here, because since you and I first talked about doing this podcast, I believe it has been publicly announced that Jenna cross has also joined mental health and United Church homes and Carol sources, as founding partners in this relationship, we know that we’re not going to be, it’s going to take more than just these four organizations going forward. A couple of things that come to mind, as you’re talking Airhart, I can remember being at a leading age meeting in Washington, DC, probably nine years ago. And we go to that we take a decK, hey, a day and we go to the Hill. And we let you know, legislatures and whatnot. And I was in the room where folks who are really focused on housing, we’re talking and then after the hill, we would some years later come back and we would talk about how the conversations went. And there was just such frustration in that room as we realized that we’re talking about a need for more housing, and for support for housing, because we knew as providers, that improves the health of our residents, but the health part comes from it’s separate from housing. And you know, from a governmental standpoint, those are like two separate buckets, and they don’t cross at all. So when I first learned about what we were talking about with this alliance, that moment is what came to my mind and crystallized. This is a way to cross to help bring together and understand how one affects the other pretty substantially.

Erhardt Preitauer 18:18
And if I may, yes, oh, much. And you know, this is not right, wrong or indifferent. I’m just stating the facts, right? How things are funded in the government is, a lot of times some creates, and this is a little bit behind the curtains, right? How things are funded often creates these separations of these fragmentation. housing and healthcare is a wonderful example that you brought up. And again, I want to be sensitive, this is not a criticism. So somebody might say, Well, what’s a different way? What’s a better way of doing? You know, there’s no perfect way of doing it? Right. But that’s the reality of it, as they have to fund it. They’re different ways of funding it that create some of these silos. All right, well, that’s the reality all good. We can do something about it. Let’s combine it up to our level. And I think part of if I may write one of the one of the elements that I think is very special about this is here’s source is a nonprofit organization. And if you look at the entire landscape of what I’ll call them, government sponsored players, right, payers that focus on Medicare, Medicaid in the marketplace like us. There’s really no mid sized organization like us, there are a handful of big publicly traded companies. Nothing wrong with that, right, all good but then there’s probably 65 or 70, smaller, state specific or county, Pacific specific organizations, and many of those are nonprofit, but sort of a multi state truly independent organization that focuses on government programs. There’s no one else in the country like CareSource. And SOAP and being nonprofit without having the two are big enough to invest in innovation, and people and partnerships, unique partnerships. But we don’t have the financial requirements, we’re not focused on maximizing shareholder return, we’re not focused on having to submit quarterly analyst calls and those types of things. So, so without, you know, without the financial requirements, and, and with the notion that we run, we’re probably one of the best running operating organizations in the country. So we run as well or better than the Nationals. But we don’t have the same financial requirements. If you kind of do that simple math that releases resources, that we can then take these resources. And we can start to do some very innovative things that the others can’t, or want. And that includes bringing together the housing aspects, and the provider aspects and the pair as was all in the one. Now, if we were in a purist for profit world, all three of those organizations would have to earn their own quote, unquote, margin, right profit margin for their own respective shareholders. And again, nothing wrong with this way our system is built, I get it. But we don’t have to do that. We do need to make a little bit more money than we spend, obviously. But it’s not about maximizing, that’s not about, you know, Oh, I gotta make mine and you gotta go make yours, you got to make yours. And then the whole model sort of breaks down. We’re here to say, All right, we know that we can create value and innovation, we know that we can make people’s lives better. By coming together, we’ll figure out the money piece right? Later, let’s focus on our mission, let’s focus on making a difference right now. And that’s why that’s one of the elements that I’m super grateful for, right? To be able to lead an organization that is able to think that way. And I’m grateful to be able to join with other organizations who are also thinking that way. That’s a huge differentiator that doesn’t really exist in the marketplace. And a big part of why, why this is groundbreaking, why this is new, why this hasn’t easily been done before.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 22:36
And I think that’s the superpower of being a nonprofit. And I had no idea until you were introduced to us at United Church homes, had no idea that an organization like horse care source, the size that you are, was a pay, a payor was nonprofit, I didn’t know you existed, I didn’t. And I and, you know, maybe to other people who are listening, this is a completely new concept as well. But yeah, I think all of those things, it ultimately comes down to mission. And that’s what I’ve been really impressed with as I’ve gotten to know your organization. So let’s come back and talk about housing a little bit. We know that when people have good stable housing, their health care picture dramatically improves. But traditionally, those have been in their own silos. So what is it that you’re doing to help cross between those to take down those silos that exist? Do they exist in the government sphere? But what are you doing as a CareSource to help break down those silos? From where you are situated in this matrix?

Erhardt Preitauer 23:50
Well, we’re doing it together, right. And, and there’s some of the obvious stuff, right, where we’re able to sort of engage and work with we call them members, but with the lens of, or through or using, right, some of the housing elements that that United Church has. So we coordinate the communication and get to be able to talk a little bit more with some of the members and all that type of stuff. And that’s incredibly helpful. But let’s keep talking a lot about some of the financial aspects. Let’s talk about the financial aspects for a second. So if hypothetically, right, and this is kind of some of the stuff obviously, that we’re doing, if the housing Management Administration in the housing can have some of these conversations with some of our members, and if the housing folks can say, hey, Jane Doe or John Doe ledge, wonderful care source member. Can we help you right to get access to care, can we begin to coordinate? Some of the things that are barriers to you getting care like transportation? Can we make an introduction to the CareSource care manager that can help to weave together some of these different types of care for someone maybe that has some complex needs. Think of the value, right, that that creates. And so a lot of times a company like CareSource is paid, like a single dollar amount, and then we have to go out, and we, for lack of a better term, sort of hire different types of providers, we call them to support these members. Well, if housing and this is the issue, right, where traditionally, like these have been totally split? Well, hey, if the housing folks can create a lot of value, through what I just talked about, right? Somebody’s having a tough time, and they’re bouncing in and out of the emergency room. I mean, that costs a lot of money. And it’s not good for the members to go back and forth to the hospital. What is housing? What if the Housing Administration can engage that member and get them the right care proactively, and stop that from happening? That’s not crazy. That’s definitely possible. But then that the housing people will have created a lot of value? Well, now because we sort of oversee that we get that single sort of dollar amount, hey, if you’re creating value in the housing, well, let’s give you some of that money, right? To be able to do it. And then when we talk about crossing the dollars between the housing and health care, that’s what I’m talking about is if the housing creates value, like that example, there’s a million different examples like this. Well, let’s invest money back into that. And that sounds so simple, but it’s unfortunately, groundbreaking in our industry, no one’s done this, at least to my knowledge. So these are, and this is just the basic stuff, right? When we start using technology, and different ways of monitoring, we can take all of this, really to the next step and create this partnership, the value and the increased quality of life for members. It’s a whole different ball game that we’re talking about. But these are a couple of real simple examples, I think that hopefully can demonstrate to folks that you know, how coming together is going to be really good for everyone involved.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 27:35
Yeah, absolutely. So housing, and health care. Where’s some of the other exciting points on the horizon? That you’re dancing in your imagination about where this all might lead us? Well,

Erhardt Preitauer 27:51
the piece two things that I’ll bring up. So what is let’s play for a little bit, right, everyone. I think this is relevant to this conversation, of course, our population in general is aging. And we know all the statistics around tech, typically, someone consumes the lion’s share of their entire lives health care spent right in the last year or two. But no one wants to be moving around, into and out of hospitals and post acute, if we can create and start to bring more of the support to their homes. I think that’s going to just be a tremendous opportunity to Battle better utilize resources, but again, focusing on increasing the quality of life for these members and their families. And so, another big focus to bringing the provider aspects together the housing and the payer piece, is to really starting to build out the ability for our members to to age in place, and do it in a productive, abundant fashion. That’s super exciting, right? The other element that comes to mind, and I can go on and on, is if you think about someone who’s aging, and they’re starting to maybe get a couple of chronic conditions, and then meeting a little more support and things are getting a little more complex, that from a health plan perspective, just thinking about the health kind of perspective. We do have a process where we have care management or care managers, right people that might go out and support our members. And then there’s different assessments and we have a lot of data and information about our members that maybe we can sort of help with, but it’s a very sad Like process, and people’s lives aren’t static. People’s lives are very dynamic things are changing, right? As we begin to bring the provider aspects together with the housing aspects together with the payer aspects. Not only are we able to more holistically care for the member, but we’re able to start to get a wider view of data for that member. And then we can begin to start taking what is a static process today, that doesn’t match the lives of our members. And we can start to make that dynamic. And if we can start to make that dynamic, we have lots of predictive analytics in our engines. And our data platforms have lots of cool data, and technology stops. But what is so what, right? Well, if, as we bring these data elements together, we can start to make it more dynamic. And then we can start to really understand, almost begin to predict what each person’s needs are based on their specific situation, based on their specific needs right now. And that’s not the way that the whole healthcare system is built, the way the healthcare system is built today is by cohorts, you have diabetes, therefore, you must need X, Y, and Z. Just like every other person that has diabetes, well, we all know that’s not true. If you’re stable, and you’ve got, you know, everything sort of working really well, you might not need any extra help. But if you’re not stable, you’re gonna need a lot of extra help. So grouping those two people in the same co fork, if you will, is not the right approach. But we don’t really have the data to be able to separate that, what we do now. And as we come together, like we’re coming together, that ability gets even more powerful. All of this goes into the next generation of care that we are driving. Go technical there.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 31:59
But no, it’s all very exciting. You know, another element to this, which we haven’t specifically talked about. That, that is obviously top of mind, for me has to do with the spiritual component of the social determinants of health. And, you know, there are studies that show that when individuals have done they’re thinking about end of life, about what their desire is what they want to have happen when they’ve had those conversations with their family members, that those individuals, those cost exorbitant costs that you talked about that often happened in the last year of life are significantly less the they go to the emergency room less often, and the quality of life was better, they are just in much pain, because they aren’t just in the curative wheel of health care. And everyone understands, okay, we’re not going to do that test. Because it really doesn’t matter the outcome of that test, we know that the end of life is coming. And so you know that that’s just one illustration about how paying attention again, the holistic, which includes our understanding of our connection to what’s greater than ourselves, to our family, to the larger community have effects on how much we’re spending on health care, as well as quality of life. So yeah,

Erhardt Preitauer 33:25
absolutely. The spiritual aspects and all of this, it’s tremendously beneficial. It’s very important. And we see it and we embrace it, as well. And so we certainly recognize in this process, the face of how all this unwinds and the different processes, and it really is a part of that whole person’s care, it’s really a part of the entire picture. Frankly, a part of me thinks about what we’re doing here, and yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 34:03
Yeah. Okay, I’m aware of the time and we have three questions that we have to ask you because we asked them with everyone. So before we do that, do you want to share how listeners can find out about you, or care about the source?

Erhardt Preitauer 34:20
You know, here source, we’ve, we’re all we’ve got our websites, and we’re all over social media and so pretty, fortunately, or unfortunately, pretty easy to find out about me as well. Right. Got a lot of information on LinkedIn Airhart pride tower, and as you might imagine, there are not a lot of Airhart pride towers out there. So you’ll find me pretty quickly. And through that you can find a lot about CareSource. And I hope people will stop and at least look at I’m less interesting, but check out a little bit about some of what CareSource is up to and some of our programs and we’re very proud of our community involvement, as well. So, again, I hope people take a second and go check it out. Okay,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 35:04
question number one, when you think about how you have aged, what do you think has changed about you, or grown with you that you really like about yourself at this age? Well,

Erhardt Preitauer 35:16
I seem to not quite yet be so excited about things. And not in a bad way, I think in a good way, a little calmer, and hopefully, dare I say, use the word, wisdom. But, you know, sometimes we get into tough situations. And when you’re 25, you get a little frazzled. And then when I just turned 50, by the way, and then when you’re a little older, double the age, then you kind of go, alright, this too shall pass. And as long as we’re doing the right things, and we’re sticking to our values, and we’re leading on our faith, it will be just fine. So I think that’s a good thing, especially in the world that we all live in with lots of opportunity for lots of distraction out there, and easily get wound up and stuff that really doesn’t matter or things that you can’t control. So I think that’s really helpful. Excellent,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 36:11
excellent. And thank you for being honest, and being bolder, and claiming your age because that is something that most in this culture are not able to do. So thanks for setting that example. Now for question number two, what has surprised you most, as you have aged

Erhardt Preitauer 36:28
part of why part of why I bring that up? Because, you know, I’ve had a couple of little issues with my right knee over the years and growing up and all this other stuff. And so I’ve never had an issue with my left knee. Literally, not within 24 hours after my 50th birthday. I took a funny step off of a stair. And then my left knee went crazy for a little while. I was like, Are you everybody says like the whole 50 thing is, there’s no way that’s true. That’s crazy. And then, so you just like on my birthday, right? I get these little issues like, oh, okay, I got to really start making sure I’m focusing on my health, as well. I talked about being balanced, I talked about holistic care, we will work really hard on that. But for all the folks out there that are passionate and working superduper hard to serve all our members to remind us that we all need to make sure we carve out just a little bit of time to take care of ourselves, too. Absolutely.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 37:34
And the good news is at 50, you’re on the upward swing of the happiness curve. What those stats show is that life contentment just continues, we can continue to feel better. And the other thing is, the next two decades are the two most creative decades in life. And actually 60 to 70 is most creative, somebody at a second 50 to 60 years third, so look out world, given everything you’ve done up to this age, just wait for the next three decades from

Erhardt Preitauer 38:07
but not be more excited, right? You get to work with amazing people and to do really great things. So I’m with you. Let’s do it. Exactly.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 38:16
So last question. Is there someone you’ve met or been who has been in your life that is setting example for you about aging, someone that inspires you to age bundle, at least someone that you look at and say, Well, I’m their age, I want to be like,

Erhardt Preitauer 38:30
You know, I’ve actually thought a lot about this. And I’m gonna give a very easy cop out answer. But my dad, and he’s in his mid 80s. And he’s super active, and he’s still jumping out of the backs of trucks. And he’s, they’re very, super active in every way mo both of my parents are and I don’t think he’s aged. He looks the same, like 15 years ago, than he does today. And so, you know, brought all the pieces back to it’s brought all the pieces together that we talked about in holistic care. I’m sure some good genetics probably doesn’t hurt. And hopefully I’ve got him. We’ve got some of them anyway. But yeah, so that’s when I thought about this question a little bit. And I just keep coming to him. I think he’s done a good job. And he has a lot of fun too, which I think is an important part of what we’re doing. We got to laugh and laugh a little steam here and there.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 39:30
Exactly. Well, and we all need those people to help influence us to age abundantly. We call them our abundant aging influencers. And there is nothing wrong with claiming a parent or grandparent or other folks are related to Well, thank you for listening to this episode of The Art of aging, part of the abundant aging podcast series relay church homes. We want to hear from you what’s changed about you as you’ve aged such as that you love what has surprised you most and how do you define them? Under aging and who influences your process to age abundantly, you can leave your responses at abundantagingpodcast.com. You can also submit feedback when you visit the Parker center on the web at unitedchurchhomes.org/parker-center. Thank you. Thank you Erhardt for engaging in this conversation. It’s always lovely to learn from you and to hear from you and we’re just so appreciative of the opportunity that we have at United Church Homes to continue to work with you.

Erhardt Preitauer 40:34
Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for the amazing work that you do and look forward to talking to me again soon.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 40:39
Absolutely. Blessings!