Homestead Village participates in Local Race

For the fifth straight year, Homestead Village's retirement community neighbor, Garden Spot Village, has held a wonderful marathon, 1/2 marathon and marathon relay race.  This year it was held on a beautiful, cool, Saturday morning, April 7, 2013.  For the last two years, Homestead Village has had a presence in the race.  Participating in the Garden Spot Village Marathon is a great team building exercise as well as just great exercise, part of our goal to raise wellness awareness at Homestead.  It also shows support for our great retirement community neighbor, Garden Spot Village.  This year the Homestead Village relay team was represented by Janet Fisher, Human Resources Assistant, and Maureen Troncoso, Supportive Services LPN, along with Susan Doyle's husband, Jim, and Janet's friend, Michelle Grosenick.  Together they ran the 26.2 miles in a very respectable 4 hours, 14 minutes.  Also participating was Douglas Motter, who completed the 1/2 Marathon in 2 hours, 8 minutes. 

Jim Doyle, Janet Fisher, Michelle Grosenick, and Maureen Troncoso represented Homestead Village in the Garden Spot Village Marathon Relay Race on Saturday April 7, 2013

Homestead Village Blood Drive

Ms. Janet Fisher, HR Assistant,
 prepares to give blood.

Homestead Village team member Janet Fisher watched the Hurricane Sandy devastation and heard the repeated requests for people to give blood.  Immediately Janet thought that Homestead Village should conduct a blood drive. Working with Laura Tallarico, Director of HR and the Homestead department leaders, Janet scheduled the Central Pennsylvania Blood Bank to visit Homestead Village on February 26th.  While the blood drive did not directly benefit the Sandy victims, it has made a difference in our community.  According to Janet, it was exciting to see so many employees step forward and sign up who had never given blood before.  "Many people are frightened to give blood; but most of those first time givers found the experience not so bad,"  Janet said.  For the inaugural event, 43 residents and staff members signed up to give blood.  Already planning for the future, Janet hopes that the positive experience of this year's givers will result in more than 60 givers next year.

The Central Pennsylvania Blood Bank serves many local hospitals and uses all of the blood it collects in Central Pennsylvania.  One of the benefits of donating with the Central Pennsylvania Blood Bank is the opportunity to "direct donate" to an individual who needs blood right now.

Janet is pleased to see the drive come to fruition.  Recently promoted to Human Resources Assistant, Janet served for more than a year as Receptionist for Homestead Village and also fulfilled many of Homestead Village's human resource functions while Ms. Tallarico was on maternity leave.  Prior to graduating from Alvernia College, Janet attended Hempfield High School and worked in Homestead Village's dining department throughout high school and college.  Janet is truly a dedicated, hard-working member of the Homestead Village team.

A 2013 Review of How Levels of Care & Aging in Place both occur at Homestead Village

The lovely Fickes House Dining Room,
Kitchen and Living Room

Two years ago, the following article was written to explain and herald the unique aging in place services Homestead Village has to offer. With the passing of time, it seemed appropriate and important to restate again the unique and outstanding benefits of life at Homestead. 

 At Homestead Village, we offer you the best of both worlds! The traditional Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) was designed to move residents (customers) through the levels of care based on the communities' pre-established care guidelines. This model is very efficient; but puts the retirement community in the position of dictating to its customers when and where they have to live. That is not desirable to most residents.
Homestead Village continues to offer all of the traditional CCRC levels of care plus we have added additional services such as Homecare and Memory Support Personal Care to further improve our mission to enhance the independence and dignity of each person served. Our vision is to create an aging in place, home-like environment for our residents, filled with companionship and great care.

Homestead Village is a traditional CCRC
Independent or Residential Living:
Offering the widest variety of housing options from cozy, very competitively priced studio apartments up to 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 2 car garage villas, Homestead Village has your perfect home in one of its 165 cottages and villas and 112 apartments.

Personal Care (formerly referred to as Assisted Living):
In Pennsylvania, the name Assisted Living was chosen by the Department of Welfare for a new level of care that costs significantly more money to license and as of this date offers no compelling reason to pursue licensure. Only a handful of retirement communities in Pennsylvania currently offer this new assisted living service. Basically Assisted Living refers to a licensed level of care that permits residents with more care needs to remain at that level rather than move to skilled nursing. Homestead Village continues to offer Personal Care Licensed Services in our apartments. It is called Supportive Services at Homestead Village. Homestead's unique personal care service allows you to live in any of our apartments and receive personal care services at a very reasonable price - much lower in studio and one bedroom apartments and very competitively priced even in our largest two bedroom special end apartments!

With Supportive Services, our residents have both independent living and personal care levels of care AND aging in place in one - at a very cost effective price. This is truly an example of enhanced senior living!

Personal Care Memory Support - Gelhard House at Westvue:
One of our four new households under development is Gelhard House at Westvue, a dedicated, secure memory support personal care home for residents with Alzheimer's and other memory loss ailments who can no longer live safely or comfortably at home. Gelhard House features private bedrooms for fourteen residents; some of the rooms include sitting areas and all feature full baths.

DEFINITION - At Homestead Village, a Household is defined as a group living arrangement centered around the comforts of home, including a living room, dining room and kitchen. A Household can be at any level of care and we currently feature both skilled nursing and personal care memory support households at Homestead Village.

Skilled Nursing Care - Fickes House and Radcliffe House:
The old, institutional style of skilled nursing is on its way out at Homestead Village, replaced by the household environments and our person centered care approach. The skilled nursing households still feature RNs, LPNs and Certified Nursing Assistants as well as Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists and Speech Language Pathologists, working together to enhance each resident's independence and dignity in a beautiful, homelike atmosphere. The number of available private rooms have skyrocketed from four up to twenty! Once again our skilled nursing households feature the best of both worlds and are just one more reason why at Homestead Village, your receive enhanced senior living.

Homestead Village Home Care:
Our newest service also contributes to the vision of aging in place through the provision of companions, certified nursing assistants and LPNs in your cottage, Villa Court villa or Mews villa, helping you stay in your own home. Available in as little as fifteen minute increments, our home care service provides you with enhanced options, enhanced care and, of course, enhanced senior living!

Protecting Our Community from Influenza

Leaders get Vaccinated!  Please be a leader.

Over the past few months, Homestead Village has focused its efforts on vacinating as many residents and staff against The Flu as possible.  The results have been better than ever imagined.  Nearly all of our health care residents are vacinated.  100% of our dining services partner, Cura Hospitality's, employees have been vacinated.  All of Homestead Village's full time employees and all but one regular part-time employee have been vacinated.   No other hospital or retirement community can claim that level of commitment on the part of the staff to the health and well being of their residents. 

Why are we so conmmitted to vaccination?  Because studies show that when community members are vaccinated, the incidence of flu is reduced including cases of death resulting from the flu. 

Here are all of Homestead Village's recommendations:

• If you are a family member or visitor, we highly recommend that you be vaccinated.
• If for somne reason you have not been vacinated, then we strongly recommend that you wear a mask when you visit.
• If you are not feeling well, coughing, sneeing or experiencing a runny nose, please consider postponing your visit until your symptoms have subsided.
• Remember to wash your hands and use sanitiser regularly.
• Remember that bathroom faucets and door handles are dirty and sources of bacteria that cause sickneess.  Use a paper towel to turn off faucets and open doors.

If we all work together we can minimize the terrible impact of the flu!



Homestead Village Achieves CARF Accreditation For The Third Time.

Back in 2002, Homestead Village was initially accredited by the Continuing Care Accreditation Commission.  That process involved an exhaustive self-study and conformance with hundreds of standards.  It was Homestead Village's first accreditation by an accrediting body.  The very next year. CCAC merged into CARF and the process changed dramatically.  Gone was the self-study aspect of the process, replaced with hundreds of additional stringent standards with which Homestead Village had to conform.  Our re-accreditation in 2007 was a challenging process.  

At at time when many other retirement communities were voluntarily giving up their accreditation, Homestead Village's Board voted unanimously to continue the accreditation process.  In 2010, both Carol Carter, Executive Director of Homestead Village, and Douglas Motter, President pursued the training process to become CARF surveyors.  Since that time, Carol and Doug have traveled around the country and to Canada to conduct accreditation surveys in a wide variety of health care organizations.  As Homestead Village prepared for its second re-accreditation, its understanding of the process and scope was enhanced greatly by the many surveys Carol and Doug had conducted over the last three years.

Accreditation is a voluntary process involving a rigorous peer review process and demonstration to a team of surveyors during an on-site survey that the organization is  conforming to CARF–CCAC’s accreditation conditions and standards.  An organization that earns CARF–CCAC accreditation is commended on its quest for quality programs and services.

Accreditation is also a wonderful process that causes an organization to consider and address many standards, practices, policies and procedures that it would not focus on otherwise.  The end result is an organization that is much better prepared to meet and even exceed the expectations and needs of its current and future persons served.

Battling the Flu

Every fall and winter, we face a battle with a hidden enemy - Influenza.  In the past, we did not take this enemy as seriously as we should have.  Not any more.  Recognizing the danger of Influenza, Homestead Village is taking every precaution to keep our community safe and illness free.  The Influenza fight begins with the flu shot.  We encourage every resident and every staff person to be immunized.  To that end, we provide the vaccine to every health care resident and staff member.  All other residents should take advantage of the many options available in the community.  If you are unable to get a flu shot from your physician, pharmacy or grocery store, then please contact the Homestead Village staff to see if we have any vaccine remaining.

The second weapon we possess is proper and frequent hand washing and use of hand sanitizers.  It is remarkable how many people do not understand the importance of proper hand washing.  The first thing to remember is that the door handles leading into and out of a bathroom and the faucet handles at the sink are both dirty.  Shutting off the faucet with your clean hands reinfects them.  Touching the door handle on the way out of the bathroom also puts the germs of all the other people who may not have washed their hands back on your clean hands!  Use a paper towel or your elbow to turn off the faucet.  Use a paper towel to open the bathroom door.  Use hand sanitizer frequently throughout the day and especially after coming in contact with items touched by many other people such as money, utensils in a restaurant such as at a salad bar, shopping carts, etc.  Try not to touch your face or rub your eyes.  If you need to cough or sneeze, use your upper arm rather than your hand to cover your mouth.

The third weapon is to limit your contact with others when you are not feeling well.  Every year we can trace serious illness in our health care areas to a family member, staff member or visitor who comes to work, or comes to visit when feeling ill.  It is better not to visit if you are not feeling well.  This year as in the past, we will limit visitors if respiratory illness is found in our health care households.  We will encourage the use of masks to minimize the spread as well.  Staff members, family members and visitors who have not received a flu shot will be asked to wear a mask when visiting or working around residents.

Influenza causes serious illness including death.  Working together and putting the health and well being of others first, we can limit the negative effects of the flu.  Get vaccinated.  Properly wash your hands often.  Use sanitizer.  Limit your visits if you are not feeling well.  Use a mask if you have any doubts.  Let's win this war!

A Fantastic Journey

A little over a month ago, eleven Lancastrians and one Virginian embarked on a 197 mile journey from Cumberland, Maryland to Washington D.C. - on foot - running.  The journey actually started many hours earlier, with a middle of the night van ride from Lancaster to Cumberland, leaving at 3:00 AM and arriving at beautiful Rocky Gap State Park outside Cumberland a little before 6:00 AM.  Why you might ask?  The reason for this 40 hour adventure can be summed up in the motivational picture to the right.  The combination of fitness, fun, and fellowship drove the twelve contestants and over three thousand other participants to take part in the fourth annual Ragnar Relay Washington DC.  The Lancaster Team, ranging in age from fourteen to 52, proudly wore Homestead Village colors and drove around in vans decorated with Homestead Village images.  Throughout the trip, other participants and observers asked about Homestead Village and even happily took a brochure!  Running the Ragnar Relay is much like living at Homestead Village.  Combining the attributes above with encouragement, support and assistance, each runner completed their arduous task and the team completed the 197 mile journey in just 31 hours!

Homestead Village's Ragnar Relay Team at the finish line.
The team  featured teachers, accountants, a speech therapist,
an IT consultant, a nursing student, a high school freshman,
and even a retirement community president.

Preparing to leave at 3:00 AM
Note the Homestead decorated van.

Ragnar early in the morning.

One of the scenic vistas in the mountains.

Ragnar at sunrise

Nearing the end