Editor’s Note: McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care are profiling the McKnight’s 2023 Pinnacle Awards honorees daily in April and May. For additional McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards content, visit this page.
Not many 16-year-olds take the self-study courses to become a certified nursing assistant.
Carl Tabor, a volunteer for his neighborhood residential care facility in southeast Portland, did just that, actually beginning the effort when he was 12.
Thus, he exhibited a dedication to the industry and quality care long before he assumed his current post of president of Avamere Living, for which he oversees 30 locations across Oregon and Washington.
At Avamere, he has developed countless workgroups to evaluate internal programs and policies with residents at the center of his attention. He joined the company in 2012 and became president in December 2020. He’s been among the first to arrive during a crisis, offering out-of-the-box ideas and assisting every department.
Tabor’s election as an “Agent of Change” category winner in the 2023 McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program must have seemed like a natural fit to the national independent judging panel.
Throughout the pandemic, working with the state of Oregon, Tabor helped alleviate hospital crowding by moving people into a lower level of care through decompression units when other skilled nursing facilities wouldn’t admit them.
In his more than 47 years in the industry, he’s been a nurse, administrator, regional director, vice president of nursing, executive vice president of quality and, now, president. Overall, Tabor has had a direct effect on more than 500 skilled nursing facilities.
He has served on the Washington Health Care Association Board and in March 2020, he participated in the Governor’s Joint Task Force for Health Care Systems Response to COVID-19 for the Oregon Health Authority as part of the subgroup focused on long-term care and vulnerable populations.
Tabor earned his undergraduate degree in nursing from Oregon Health Sciences University while concurrently taking postgraduate classes in gerontology, counseling and business administration.
The McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care. Honorees were recognized March 7 at a gala banquet and awards ceremony in Chicago. The program’s Platinum sponsor was MatrixCare. Omnicare was a Silver sponsor; and additional sponsors included Pinnacle Quality Insight, HealthDirect and Sentrics.
