Move To New Facility Proving To Be A Positive For Glen Haven Village

The move to homestyle-based nursing care appears to be working well for both staff and residents at the Glen Haven Village skilled nursing facility.

Last summer, Glen Haven residents moved from an outdated 55-year-old building into a new state-of-art home at Glen Have Village, built among a cluster of residential cottages on the campus of the Glenwood Resource Center. The facility is comprised of five long-term care units, each with the capability to house up to 12 residents, and one 9-bed rehabilitation unit.

On moving day last August, Glen Haven housed 44 residents. Eight months later, all 60 long-term beds are occupied.
“We did 15 new admissions in the first month and a half (after the move) and by the end of September, our long-term care was nearly full,” Glen Haven Village Administrator Julianne Marriott said last week. “We do have a waiting list at this time.”

The successful move to the GRC campus isn’t the only positive development that has occurred at Glen Haven Village in recent months. After a successful survey (inspection) in September, Glen Haven was removed from a national list of care facilities that had been given a Special Focus Facility (SFF) designation. The SFF designation meant Glen Haven had been identified as a facility with a history of quality care issues and was being closely scrutinized by theIowa Department of Inspections and Appeals and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Glen Haven was placed on the SFF list because of “poor compliance history” from 2013-2016. The facility was notified of the designation shortly after Marriott was hired in 2017.

In an interview with The Opinion-Tribune in June 2019, Marriott said she believed the deficiencies cited in the three years prior to her arrival were the result of a lack of consistent leadership in the oversight of resident care.

“When I first came to Glen Haven, residents were not getting poor care from the people on the front line. The front-line people at Glen Haven have always done a great job,” Marriott said. “The problem was that leadership was not always consistent. Nobody was doing the same thing and when you look at widespread or patterned (deficiencies), those come from not doing the same thing all the time.

In order to “graduate” from the SFF list, Glen Haven was required to pass two consecutive surveys without major or widespread deficiencies as defined by the CMS’s “Scope and Severity Grid.”

Glen Haven moved off the SFF by clearing two consecutive surveys in 2019 – in March and September (approximately one month after the move to Glen Haven Village).

“The survey went very well,” Marriott said. “What they were looking for was that any deficient practices were isolated and minor, and they were.

“Overall, they were confident the residents are being well cared for and that they were getting all the services needed. That, I think, is the most important thing for the surveyors to see.”

Marriott admitted that the September survey created some anxiety because staff and residents were still getting settled in at the new facility.

“For our operations, it was just a month after we completely changed the way we do business. While things were going well, I don’t think any facility would desire a survey at that point,” she said. “But, the residents were very, very pleased with the new cottage model. The families were very happy. We had had a lot of communication with the residents and the families about how our operation was going to be working in the cottage model. I think the surveyors saw that and they saw the amount of preparation we had done prior to the move and they saw the amount of work we had done following the move.”

Like all skilled-care facilities, Glen Haven Village is currently facing the challenge of keeping residents safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Residents at skilled nursing and assisted living facilities are among the most vulnerable if they contract the coronavirus. Glen Haven Village and its sister property – Linnwood Estates Assisted Living in Glenwood - have implemented restrictive visitation policies for families and progressive protocols for employees and residents to prevent potential spread of the disease.

The Opinion-Tribune

116 S Walnut St Glenwood, IA 51534-1665
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