June 2013

In This Issue
California's First Green House Homes Open, Ushering in New Kind of Nursing Care
Sunshine State to Welcome the First Skilled Nursing Green House Homes at John Knox Village
Provider Magazine Highlights Flexible Funding for Green House homes
Advances in Person-Centered Dementia Care
Leaving to Go Back: Al Power and the St. John's Home Green House Project
HE GREEN HOUSE® Project in New York Press Article

Celebrating 10 Years of Leading a Legacy

 

Over the years, June has been a big month for The Green House Project! Five years ago Green House presented to CMS to provide creative solutions for the quality of life in nursing homes....and three years in June,

Long Term Living magazine named the Green House Project as one of its top 10 movements in Long Term Care!

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Claremont, Calif. - California today ushered in a new era of nursing home care with the opening of the state's first certified Green House homes at Mt. San Antonio Gardens, a senior community in Southern California. The opening is expected to usher in a new wave of similar projects across California as legislation designed to encourage a small-home approach to skilled nursing home care takes effect.

 

 

A total of 20 residents will live at the Evergreen Villas in two residential neighborhood homes, designed by Ewing Architects, Inc., AIA, of Pasadena, each with private rooms and bathrooms with showers. Unlike traditional nursing homes, Green House homes are specifically built from the ground up to be real homes-in every way. Residents socialize in cozy living rooms and enjoy meals cooked in open kitchens, by the same people that care for them each day. Continue Reading                                 

 

Meet the CEO/President for Mt. San Antonio Gardens, Randy Stoll click here

  


 

These are definitely exciting times at John Knox Village in Pompano Beach, Florida!  Last week their Board of Directors approved the development of THE GREEN HOUSE� residences at the Village and renovations to their current Health Center.  "This project ensures our ability to fulfill our health care contract with our residents at the level and quality of care they expect from us," said Board Chairman William Knibloe, II. "Further, it provides for our employees the opportunity to be part of the most important development and progressive care giving to seniors existing today." 

  

 

 

 Provider Magazine tracks the pulse of the industry and serves as the leading source of business and clinical news for long term and post-acute care professionals.  Long term care providers know that the demands of the consumer are changing.  So why do many nursing homes still look the same way they did 20 years ago?  One barrier to transformation may be in the ability to find, "low-cost, flexible financing sources".  New financing programs are being created to remove this barrier, and to support Green House home development. 

 

In 2011, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the nation's leading health foundation, made a $10 million Program-Related Investment (PRI) in NCB Capital Impact and The Green House Project to make it easier for more providers to obtain flexible financing and build Green House homes.  In making this investment, the foundation saw a unique potential for The Green House model to address the nation's growing shortage of affordable, high-quality long term care options for low-income elders. 

 

 

 

In 2001, the Institute on Medicine released a seminal report titled "Crossing the Quality Chasm" that called for a redesign of the nation's healthcare system and described healthcare in America as impersonal and fragmented (IOM, 2001). The report noted that a critical element needed in redesigning the healthcare system was a shift to person-centered practices. These practices are rooted in humanistic psychology and the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow among others. Unfortunately, little progress has been made in the past dozen years to transform systems and practices to support person-centered outcomes. Recently, a group of concerned national dementia care experts decided to focus on advancing person-centered values and practices for dementia care. 

 


 


When Al Power was in med school and specializing in geriatrics, he would visit his grandmother in a nursing home. During one these visits, he noticed the nameplate on her door; the last name, "Power" had an "s" at the end of it.

 

"It was a note to me," he said. "Of how anonymous she was."

 

To Al, such anonymity wasn't an issue unique to that particular nursing home - it was in the corners of every traditional nursing home. It is evident whenever elders are pushed into an institutional setting and away from their families. Away from the libraries. Away from neighbors. Away from the coffee shops. And away from the streets they know.

 

 


Last week, the New York Press published an  article  about the Health Policy Symposium recently hosted by Jewish Home Lifecare and the Himan Brown Charitable Trust in New York City. During the symposium, speakers discussed the needs of a rapidly aging population and the simultaneous decline in the health care workforce. One panelist, Dr. Ezekiel Emanual, a former special advisor to the White House, spoke to the importance of affordable and quality health care for aging adults. 

 

 

Anna Ortigara
Co-Editor
 
Mary Hopfner-Thomas
Co-Editor
 
Rachel Scher
Co-Editor

THE GREEN HOUSE Newsletter
Published monthly to share information with providers, elders and others about THE GREEN HOUSE Project, a new and innovative approach to long-term, skilled nursing care. To learn more, visit www.thegreenhouseproject.org.
  

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