“I will provide the absolute finest in senior living care,”
is what I promised her, and then she died. I think that she waited for me, you see, I had just returned from a long trip monitoring her condition from the road, knowing that she had a short time to live. At that time, I didn’t fully realize how that moment would completely redirect my whole life and what I do today. Allow me to explain…
The year is 1985, I’m in my second year at the University of Pittsburgh and the lady that just passed away was my grandmother, whom I loved. As a teenager, I remember my grandmother taking in the elderly, working as a Dom care helper. Dom care is a service where caregivers provide a safe community based living environment for those who cannot live independently. This was one of my earliest experiences in caring for individuals who couldn’t completely take care of themselves. Watching how she genuinely took care of the sick all of her life, only to wither away in a nursing home at the end of it. My mother and aunt tried their very best to take care of grandmother on their own, but were not up to the heavy burden and responsibilities that came with taking care of another person’s life. Now, as she wastes away in a nursing home, mouth riddled with sores, body covered with ulcers, I ask myself, is this the level of care I can expect as other loved ones near the end of their lives. Where do I send someone where the care is of good quality. Who will be there to answer those important end of life questions and offer the services that really help in a much needed time? I must admit that during that moment I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I would continue to think about it, as the years passed.
I find myself now in college, working as an orderly in a hospital. It was here, where, like my grandmother, I started to develop a passion for taking care of the sick. I understood early on that with proper care and attention to those needing it, positive results could be achieved. As the years progressed as well as my schooling, I continued do work my way into various positions at the hospital. As I moved from, an orderly in the emergency room, to an Operating Room Tech, then to an Operating Room Department Manager, over to Director of Business Manager, finally to Director of Operations, I couldn’t help but thinking that although this acute care is not perfect, this is not an industry that needs fixing. In a moment of unprecedented clarity, I knew then, what I had to do. It was at this time when I began my experience in the long term care industry. I felt it to be best if I began with an internship at a local Nursing Home… I mean what did I know of long term care? Although by this time I had successfully completed my masters’ degree at Carnegie Mellon University, I still felt a hunger to learn this industry, and knew that I had to be among the residents to truly grow in my understanding of it.
“There’s no turning back now,” on Nov 26th, the day after Thanksgiving, I find myself uttering these very words. It took a lifetime of experience to realize all of the gaps in the long term care industry, I was at a point where I could do something about it, and now it was my responsibility to make the needed changes. These changes had to begin with the systems and services that I was to put in place. To begin, I felt it to be important that the company remain at a size where it all feels like a close community based living environment. More often than not, through my experience I saw that companies grew and expanded to quickly, losing the attention to detail, the passion for running a closer community, and ultimately compromising service to their customers, the residents. I hired a National Consulting firm to develop our strict clinical polices, so that if a resident comes to live with us in the afternoon, they’re not back in the hospital by the evening.