Green Houses provide an environment in which residents receive nursing support and clinical care without the care becoming the focus of their existence.
By altering facility sizes, interior designs, staffing patterns and methods of delivering skilled services, the Green House model provides greater health and lifestyle benefits compared to traditional nursing homes and assisted living communities. Here's more:
A Green House is designed to look like a private home or apartment, with seven to ten bedrooms for seniors, so that each resident has his or her own room.
The common living space comprises a shared living room, dining room and kitchen facilities. The common room centers around a single big table where the group--residents, staff, caregivers, family and friends--sits down to dinner every night together.
"The Green House is based on deep relationships, nurturing, sustaining and protecting each person," says Joyce Ebmeier, a guide for a nine-person home in Nebraska. "Excellent medical treatment is a key component of life in a Green House, but it is delivered discretely and supportively, respecting the rhythm of each elder's life."
The concept has spread from four Green House homes in Tupelo, Mississippi, to more than 40 homes operating in 10 states. NCB Capital Impact of Oakland, Calif., under the leadership of Robert Jenkens, has received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to replicate the Green House model nationally, with the goal of developing 50 such homes by 2010.
"We are trying to create a nursing home that people will want to live and work in," says Jenkens. "We want to make nursing homes places where people get care but their lives have meaning and purpose."
The Green House concept has spread from four Green House homes in Tupelo, Mississippi., to more than 40 Green House homes operating in nine states. An additional 79 homes are under construction or in development, and close to 80 homes are planned in the coming years. Four Green House nursing homes in Florida are under development.
With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NCB Capital Impact is providing technical assistance and pre-development loans to organizations to facilitate replication of the Green House model nationally.