Brielle Khalar serves as Executive Director at Ecumen Lakeview Commons, an assisted living and memory care community located in Maplewood, Minnesota. The community received a 2025 AHCA/NCAL Silver National Quality Award, reflecting a strong commitment to its staff, residents, families, and the local community.
The Quality Journey from Start to Now
Brielle saw this opportunity to showcase the community’s commitment to quality after Ecumen became a member of AHCA/NCAL in January 2023. “I decided to pursue the Bronze Quality Award with only 20 days before the deadline. The Bronze Award set the stage for my team – helping us to define who we are, what we do, and why we do it. I also encouraged other Ecumen communities to apply, and now, around a dozen have achieved Bronze.
“But we were the first to earn Silver. The Silver award process gave us a common language to discuss our work, evaluate how we do it, and determine if it is effective. The awards process gave us that structure we needed.”
Valuing People
The staff at Ecumen Lakeview Commons are highly valued, contributing to the strong culture and success of the community in delivering quality care: “Over the course of our quality journey, we’ve learned to listen to our people, especially our frontline workers and value their input. Historically, leadership would lead projects without much frontline involvement, but now, we encourage team-led initiatives.
“For example, we had a project in memory care that was led by a resident assistant. By involving all levels of staff, we gained valuable insights that leadership alone wouldn’t have considered. [We also…] had a project focused on trying to lower service refusals from patients, and our frontline workers helped us to find better and more effective approaches to encouraging resident participation in care.”
Customer-Focused Excellence
For Ecumen Lakeview Commons, customer-focused excellence means serving the whole person: physical, social, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs. One memorable case of their all-around customer care involved a resident who transferred from another assisted living community: “We only knew that his family was transferring him and after moving in, he had made inappropriate comments toward team members and had outbursts. And we had come to find out that his prior facility asked him to leave because of these issues.
“However, one of our nurses took the time to truly get to know him and discovered he had been a competitive tennis player before a stroke left him wheelchair-bound, and that it upset him he couldn’t do that anymore. Understanding his loss helped us approach him differently, set boundaries, and support him. Over time, his behavior completely changed, and his son was so grateful to us that he got to see his dad happy again even though he was drastically different physically.”
Innovation
Fall prevention is always a constant challenge in any facility and can be a difficult time especially in memory care units. However, Ecumen Lakeview Commons found a new way to improve the outcome of that common issue: “We learned about Viconic – which is a fall defense flooring, an underlayment that you put under the floor that is designed to prevent serious injuries from falls. With support from our business development team, we installed it in three memory care units.
“Since then, our overall fall rate dropped from 15 percent to around 6 to7 percent, and falls with injuries on that flooring have been zero. It’s been an amazing addition to our facility and was truly an out of the box idea in terms of changing the environment compared to traditional fall prevention approaches.”
Societal Contribution
While Ecumen Lakeview Commons is always working to support staff and residents, they also pride themselves on supporting their local community in Minnesota: “We specialize in supporting residents with varying degrees of memory loss, including those not yet ready for traditional memory care. We pride ourselves on being able to admit individuals other communities may decline and also admitting residents in seven days or less compared to the norm of two weeks or more in Minnesota. We also have a longstanding tradition of 30 years hosting an Oktoberfest celebration, which always brings residents, families, and the wider community together.”
Looking Forward
For Ecumen Lakeview Commons, the Silver Quality Award is a large step in their quality journey, but they have plans for the future as they work toward reaching Gold: “The next step is ensuring our systems are consistent and repeatable across all departments. We’ve developed strong processes and evaluation methods, but moving forward, we need to ensure everyone is aligned and operating with the same approach.”
Final Advice
After achieving the silver level in the Quality Award journey Brielle shared some final advice on the process: “The quality journey is not about perfection. It’s about starting small and being intentional. Begin with the basics, involve your team, and don’t be overwhelmed by the criteria. The process is a valuable guide to understanding your organization, improving systems, and aligning your team’s language and goals.
“I’m a strong advocate for the Quality Award process. Beyond recognition, it measurably improves outcomes, operations, and alignment within a team. It’s not just good marketing — it’s a framework that truly strengthens organizations.”