Private rooms alone won’t remedy nursing home system’s shortcomings. “The Green House model is a lot more than just the building,” says Alex Spanko. “It’s about the culture, too.”

“The only question,” Cook said, “is whether they will take the harsh lessons of the pandemic to heart and implement empowering care models such as Green House — or choose to ignore the experiences of elders and decades of research and build the exact same types of traditional, outdated buildings that failed too many Canadians before, during and after COVID-19.”

"Analysts say the nursing-home model is outdated. Many nursing homes are 40 or 50 years old, looking much like hospitals: large, impersonal and with shared rooms. Research has shown that smaller nursing homes — like ones known as Green Houses — often provide better, more personal care."

“It’s important that we leverage what we learned … this could be a game changer, it could really provide that level of support and incentives to really help us achieve what we all want,” Susan Ryan, CEO for the Center for Innovation, told SNN.

The Center for Innovation, or CFI, the parent organization of the Green House Project and Pioneer Network, is reorganizing its leadership as it focuses on growth. Susan Ryan will serve as the Center for Innovation’s first CEO ... Ryan has led GHP as it grew to include more than 370 homes in 32 states."

"New HUD housing policy can align with and support calls for change in the nursing-home industry. Updating HUD’s existing public-private infrastructure with grants and loan terms targeted at specific innovations such as the small-home design, presents a logical place to originate much of the proposed reform that policy makers and consumers are advocating."

"Research demonstrated the relative advantage of Green House homes over traditional nursing homes. Technical assistance made the model less complex for potential adopters and less expensive because technical assistance staff worked with states to mitigate potentially costly regulatory hurdles and provide a process and model for the development of Green House homes."

"One way to attract and retain nursing home staff is to house them in nearby, affordable apartments, an idea used with success by at least several healthcare companies on the East Coast. The latest to create this employee benefit is Navigator Homes of New England. It is in development to bring Green House Project-inspired homes to 70 seniors with skilled nursing needs in Martha’s Vineyard."

“After years of gathering and studying data about their small-home model of long-term care, Green House leaders made a calculated move this week to give skilled nursing operators more reasons to adopt the innovative model.”

"The Green House model challenges caregivers to go beyond labels and always see the person behind them: the person who lived a full, rich life before requiring additional care and who deserves to keep living with that same richness amid the natural changes that come with aging."

"It’s not just an exercise in kindness. Independent research shows that the residents living in the U.S.-based Green House Project homes (small households) have deeper relationships with staff, fewer trips to the hospital emergency department and fewer pressure ulcers or urinary-tract infections — conditions that can be serious for older adults and costly to the health-care system."

“A lesson from the Green House movement and from other countries’ experience is that training and permitting nurses and other care staff to deliver a range of services improves quality and job satisfaction as well as patient satisfaction.”

That's why there's a growing call for smaller households, like the Green House model, that can be created within larger care homes but also in residential communities.

The Green House Project and Pioneer Network hope to draw on their decades of shared experience to improve the lives of people living in nursing homes, while also building a better eldercare infrastructure for future generations.

By coming together, we can create a consolidated source of knowledge and best practices based on experience gained through both organizations’ years of work on the ground

Communities that have adopted the universal worker model, espoused by the Green House Project, are seeing much higher levels of engagement than those with traditional workforce models.

Companies like Navigator Elder Homes of New England are teaming up with workforce housing developers to build apartment complexes for nursing home staff.

Removing financial barriers like access to capital and Medicaid underfunding would be a step toward nursing home innovation, Ryan said, like the shift to private rooms and the small home model.

“People vote with their feet,” Ponthie said, adding that traditional rural providers are facing unprecedented closures. “During COVID, we grew our census. Everyone else had huge declines. Drop the mic. We’re done. The demand is there.” 

Residents can continue to live in a Green House home as their care needs progress, without having to undergo transfers to different facilities, which can be more traumatic as people age. Deinstitutionalization is a core value.

“It’s important to me that we incentivize what we want to see incentivized and figure out how we increase quality at a lower cost and create something that meets consumer demand.”

The Green House Project wants to provide a full continuum of care for residents, bridging the gap between home care and more extensive institutional care.

Listen to Passamaquoddy Lodge board president Caroline Davies and Nova Scotia Centre on Aging director Janice Keefe discuss the power of a proposed new Canadian Green House community set for groundbreaking in 2023!

"The Green House Project is an innovative, nationally recognized model in LTCFs that creates small homes that recognize the individuality of residents and respect their autonomy, choice, privacy, and dignity, yet are also affordable." 

"We get a lot of referrals. ... We get people from other counties and other states. They come here and they're like, 'When I retire, when I have to go into a home, this is where I want to be because it's so homelike, it's so personal.'"