Shared Rooms Helped Fuel COVID-19 Deaths in Nursing Homes. Are a Million Private Rooms Possible?

Categories: In The News, National Media Items

Private rooms alone won’t remedy the 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.”

For example, moving residents into private rooms without investing in communal spaces or activity programs or more staff that bring them out of those rooms could cause increased loneliness and social isolation, an issue nursing homes really struggled with during the pandemic.

“Private rooms are really just step one,” says Spanko. “There’s another 25 steps that also need to be done to get to where we really want to be.”

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  • There’s already a waiting list for Navigator Homes, which will be the Island’s first care facility to follow the Green House Model of Nursing Home Care. At Navigator Homes in Edgartown, the five buildings surround a central green space, where landscaping plans include walking paths connecting the residences. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is financing the buildings’ construction. 

  • Evidence-based culture change partners provide professionals with supportive, interdisciplinary training.  “We need as many Green Houses as possible and households or buildings to be built with wise investment of public and private dollars,” Anne Montgomery said. “The EINSTEIN Option calls for this to happen and lays out a blueprint for it.”

  • “If we’re going to elevate the resident’s voice, we’ve got to include residents,” said Laci Cornelison, interim director of the Center on Aging at Kansas State University and coalition member, during her session at Pioneer Network and The Green House Project’s 2024 Conference on Wednesday. “We really wanted to take an approach where we’re looking at things through the lens of culture change and person-centered care. We focus mostly on quality of life rather than clinical needs.”

  • “At a time when hospitals continued to push more post-surgical patients straight to home care, Londonderry Village in Palmyra, PA, decided to invest in six Green House homes with 10 beds each. ‘We believed in that culture and that quality of care,’ said President and CEO Jeff Shireman. ‘People have great experiences in that environment.'”