Community Funding: Rural Grocery Stores Like IKE!

IKE is the “Invest Kansas Exemption” for conducting a public offering of securities in a Kansas community without having to register with the Office of the Kansas Securities Commissioner (KSC). The Home Town Market in Minneola, KS used IKE to finance building renovations and equipment for the grocery store and deli. KSC presenters will explain how IKE and other alternatives for grocery store financing are possible under Kansas and federal securities laws. IKE is designed to assist small businesses and other organizations formed in Kansas raise up to a total of $1,000,000 during a 12-month period. Sales to any one purchaser are limited to$5,000 unless the purchaser is an accredited investor. There are no fee requirements; issuer’s only need to submit a one-page form for notice to KSC; and KSC staff is available to help with questions before and after an IKE offering. Following Kansas being the first state to enact an exemption like this, several other states have also formed similar exemptions and laws. You can go to our website and review more about IKE at www.ksc.ks.gov/IKE. Other common exemptions are listed on the left panel of this page

Libraries and Museums: Fostering GLAM Collaboration at the University of Iowa

This report outlines the findings of the University of Iowa (UI) Executive Leadership Academy – Higher Education (ELA) project team GLAM1 during the 2017-18 academic year. Team GLAM was charged by the UI Stanley Museum of Art Interim Chair James Leach and UI Librarian John Culshaw with investigating the present state and potential of new collaboration between the Stanley Museum and those UI Libraries with the greatest focus on the visual arts. This report provides the team’s findings, as well as its recommendations for forging new relationships and leveraging the strengths of both types of institution to transform them into places where bold experiments will generate new ideas for research, teaching, and service. Based on our discussions, research, site visits, interviews, and ideation sessions held between October 2017 and April 2018, team GLAM recommends implementation of the following five broad collaborative practices. Full details around these recommendations can be found on pps. 18-20 in the final report: Establish a formal GLAM committee that is empowered to shape an environment on campus where GLAM can flourish and be sustained. Increase opportunities for collaborations across staff positions. Reward and recognize staff and faculty who actively and productively collaborate in GLAM research, teaching, and service activities. Identify and proactively pursue grants and other funding opportunities that support collaborative activities across GLAM. Invest in digitization and joint technologies related to accessibility and discovery. GLAM on the UI campus faces enormous budgetary, technology, and other environmental challenges that are most effectively addressed by broader collaboration across campus, beyond traditional organizational structures and disciplines. By strengthening current collaborations while seeking new ones across campus, the Stanley Museum of Art and the UI Libraries can leverage the strengths of both entities and advance their missions in service of UI’s broader strategic goals

“Serious and Complex Illness“ in Quality Improvement and Policy Reform for End-of-Life Care

Americans are living longer — a mark of success in public health and medical care — but more will live the last few years with progressive illness and disability. The dominant conception of care delivery separates “aggressive” or life-extending care from “palliative” or death-accepting care, with an assumed “transition” between them. The physiology and the experience of this population are mismatched in this model. Here, we propose a more useful category for public policy and clinical quality improvement: persons who will die as a result of “serious and complex illness.” Delivery system changes could ensure reliable, continuous, and competent care to this population

Early intervention in planning end-of-life care with ambulatory geriatric patients: results of a pilot trial

BACKGROUND: A large discrepancy exists between the wishes of dying patients and their actual end-of-life care. However, retrospective clinical experience suggests that early advance care planning (ACP) can markedly reduce this discrepancy. This article describes a randomized trial to evaluate the short-term clinical utility of early ACP. We also assessed the feasibility of performing a larger prospective study to document long-term outcomes. METHODS: Ambulatory geriatric patients (N = 61) were randomized to either a control group, which received only a Massachusetts Health Care Proxy form to complete, or an intervention group, in which each patient and health care agent discussed ACP with a trained nurse facilitator. The benefits and burdens of life-sustaining treatments were discussed, and patient goals and preferences for these treatments were documented. RESULTS: Two-month follow-up revealed that the intervention achieved higher congruence between agents and patients in their understanding of patients\u27 end-of-life care preferences, with 76% (19/25) in complete agreement vs 55% (12/22) of the controls (effect size [ES] = -0.43). There was also a greater increase in patient knowledge about ACP in the intervention group (ES = 0.22). Intervention patients became less willing to undergo life-sustaining treatments for a new serious medical problem (ES = -0.25), more willing to undergo such treatments for an incurable progressive disease (ES = 0.24), and less willing to tolerate poor health states (ES = -0.78). Practical insights were gained about how to conduct a larger study more effectively. CONCLUSION: A facilitated discussion about end-of-life care between patients and their health care agents helps define and document the patient\u27s wishes for both patient and agent