A shift to more home-like nursing homes won’t happen any time soon for Onondaga County.
Plans to build small residential-style Green Houses in Cicero have been canceled for financial and planning reasons, Loretto, the largest local provider of long-term care, announced in April.
“The Green House Project represents the culture change of nursing homes,” says Tom Dennison, a Syracuse University professor specializing in long-term care issues and a former nursing home administrator.
The Green Houses in Cicero would have been the third of its kind in New York state. But Loretto officials say costs, population rates and increasing costs of Medicaid, a tax-supported health-insurance program, changed the decision. The project would have cost $32 million to build 13 homes.
Nationally, the Green House project started with geriatrician Bill Thomas, a native of Syracuse, and a $10,000,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Thomas’ idea is to replace large-scale institutions with smaller, more residential-style homes. The typical Green House project consists of several one-story individual homes housing up to ten elders. Each residence includes private bedrooms, bathrooms, a country-style kitchen and open living-room area.
The project has reached the Rochester and Albany area with two new Green House facilities. The Eddy Village at Cohoes near Albany was built in December 2008.
“It’s a much nicer environment to live-in for an elder. It’s a home,” says Laurie Mante, vice president of residential services and Green House Project manager at Eddy Village.
The project was an improvement for the 150 elders moved from institutional nursing homes in the Albany area, says Mante. The remainder of the 42 beds have been filled by home-care patients who previously had nursing assistants come to their own homes to care for them.
The greatest lifestyle difference for Green House residents, say Mante, is choice about many daily routines such as meal times. “The elders get to decide how they want to spend their days,” she said. The institutional-style nursing homes have set times for dinner, activities and a specific selection of engagement events.
A similar plan was developed in Rochester with St. Johns home. The $55 million-project opened in 2010. The project will eventually included 20 Green Houses.
Loretto recently closed its Oswego nursing home last summer in hopes of continuing with the Green Home project in Cicero. But the 120-bed Oswego nursing home ended up moving its residents to other existing nursing homes. Loretto also planned on closing Loretto Rosewood Heights in Syracuse. Now, the 242-bed nursing home will remain open after plans not to build were decided. Loretto decided to spruce up the institution-style homes with the money going to the Green Houses.
The cultural change to Green House facilities in Onondaga county is about 20 years away say experts. The residential-style homes are more expensive settings for caring for the elderly, said SU professor Dennison, and governments are unlikely to shift to supporting more costly care through Medicaid during these tight-budget times.
But , he predicted, the change will eventually come. “Facilities will need to change eventually,” said Dennison. “It will change when typical nursing homes all become obsolete.”
(Chelsea Damberg is a junior with dual majors in broadcast journalism and policy studies.)
-30-
