The Boston Globe has a font-page article on a new type of nursing home that will be opening in Chelsea in 2008. The new model is called a “Green House” and will be structured as a self-contained set of 10 bedrooms clusted around an open Kitchen and living area and serviced by 2 personal care attendants. The expansion of the Green House concept is being funded by a $10 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Here are some excerpts from the article:
A nursing home with the potential to transform elder care is coming to Massachusetts.
Its hallmarks: A self-contained house for 10 private rooms, home-cooked meals, and daily routines set by the residents. Scheduled to open in Chelsea in 2008, the new facility represents the cutting edge of a national movement to replace institutional care with a more home-like atmosphere.
The Leonard Florence Center for Living will contain 10 “Green Houses” — each with 10 bedrooms clustered around an open kitchen and living area — that will be stacked in a five-story condominium-style structure. The Chelsea units will be the first urban Green Houses, designed to provide an example for the nursing home industry nationwide.
Conceived by a Harvard-trained geriatrician, Dr. William Thomas, the first Green Houses opened in Tupelo, Miss., in 2003 to provide seniors of all incomes with more dignity, autonomy, and choice in long-term care. The name stems from the focus on encouraging personal growth among residents.
Since then, two sets of suburban-style Green Houses with yards have opened in Michigan and Nebraska, and 25 more are in the planning stages nationwide.
[. . . ]
To drive change nationwide, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a healthcare philanthropy, awarded $10 million last year to a nonprofit development corporation, NCB Capital Impact, to help bring the Green House model to every state.
“We hope that we are pushing the envelope to really rethink nursing homes,” said Jane Isaacs Lowe, a senior program officer at the foundation.
The Chelsea Jewish Nursing Home, a nonprofit organization that has been providing care since 1919, won the development corporation’s help a few months ago, beating out dozens of other proposals. The aid comes in the form of technical and planning expertise. The corporation also helped Chelsea Jewish secure $5 million in tax credits to help offset the estimated $20 million cost of the project, which they are raising from private donors.
[. . .]
Each of the 10 Green Houses will be managed by the residents and two primary caretakers on each day shift, one of whom is “devoted to loving cooking,” Berman said. The caretakers will also do light housework and help residents with bathing, grooming, and dressing.
The residents in each Green House will determine their own daily routine, menu, and activities. Meals generally will be served family-style, around one long table, with staff and visitors joining in. Residents can volunteer to help keep the household running by doing chores like cooking, folding laundry, and accompanying the cook to the grocery store.
“That’s a more important activity for some residents than anything we could provide,” Berman said.
One nurse will serve two 10-resident Green Houses, but medical trappings will be kept to a minimum.
The Green Houses typically cost no more to run than traditional homes, even though there are more caretakers per resident, because they have less waste and do not need such infrastructure as dietary departments. As at conventional homes, most of the bills will be paid by the Medicaid program for low-income seniors and the disabled .
[. . .]
A two-year study that compared the Tupelo Green Houses with two traditional nursing homes found that quality of life was better in the Green Houses, with residents saying they had more dignity, privacy, meaningful activity, relationships, and autonomy, according to Rosalie A. Kane, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
Kane said the Green Houses provided small benefits in the quality of care — residents showed less depression, less incontinence, and less of a decline in the ability to feed themselves.
[. . .]
Staff turnover, which averages 71 percent annually in nursing homes, fell to just 10 percent, according to the Green House national staff.
[. . .]
‘Green Houses’ for golden years
Innovative units come to Mass.
Boston GlobeBy Alice Dembner, Globe Staff
September 30, 2006
