27 Jun 2025 6 min read

What We Measure

Is What We Become

From the Table Series: Replacing Senior Housing with Human Infrastructure

If all you measure is decline,
then decline is all you’ll see.

This is the brutal truth behind most of Canadian long-term care:
We track suffering better than we enable thriving.

Vitals, falls, medications, transfers, infections, deaths.
The ledger of long-term care is a report card of collapse.

And that’s not care.
That’s autopsy.

1. The Surveillance Model of Care

In most LTC homes today, the tools used to “monitor well-being” are designed to catch failure:

Bed alarms to detect falls
Medication logs to check compliance
Staffing forms to track absence
Charts filled with pain scores and behaviour incidents

What’s missing?

Joy
Fulfilment
Relationship
Spiritual comfort
Self-determination

These are not optional extras.
They are vital signs of the soul.

And right now, we don’t track them... so we don’t protect them.

2. Better Metrics Already Exist

Tools like DEMQOL-CH (Dementia Quality of Life – Care Home version) let us measure more than decline.

They capture:

Emotional expression
Sense of identity
Social interaction
Satisfaction with environment
Moments of meaning

And practices like Coherent Breathing, backed by TREC’s applied research, give staff and residents direct control over stress, mood, and nervous system balance.

These are not spiritual guesses.
They are evidence-based indicators of wellness.

We just don’t treat them like primary data.

3. The Table Tracks Thriving — Not Just Survival

From design to data, The Table reverses the logic of traditional elder care.

We ask: “What would we need to see, every day, to know a resident was not just alive — but whole?”

Then we build it into the architecture, the operations, and the measurement.

Every Table installation includes:

Resident thriving dashboards, incorporating DEMQOL metrics, social engagement levels, and personalized care values
Family-reported outcomes, not just staff assessments
Coherent Breathing and emotional regulation tracking as part of daily care team rhythm
Cultural and spiritual relevance audits to ensure the resident is not alienated by the environment
Life Satisfaction Interviews as part of intake and monthly review

This isn’t theoretical.
It’s operational.

4. Measurement = Funding = Self-Sustainment

Because here’s the real leverage:

When you measure the right things — you can fund the right systems.

The Table generates validated research outputs that can be:

Published in clinical and social science journals
Licensed for therapeutic program development
Used in pharmaceutical and longevity trials
Integrated into insurance cost models for predictive wellness
Tied to ESG metrics for impact capital and policy alignment

The Table pays for itself in data — not just beds.

Not surveillance data.
Human flourishing data.

That’s the shift.

We’re Done Monitoring Death.

We’re Tracking Life.

And what we track — we preserve.
What we value — we prove.
What we measure — we become.

The Table doesn’t just care for elders.
It demonstrates their worth, in every metric that matters.

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Thanks!

If all you measure is decline, decline is all you’ll find.

Vitals. Falls. Meds. Death.

The Table doesn’t monitor death.
It tracks life.

We don’t guess at thriving.
We measure it.

PS -