Welcome Home Management is proud to announce to nomination process is now open for the North Star Leadership Award. 

The North Star Leadership award exemplifies those individuals who work in Welcome Home properties for the work that they do with the residents and with their team members.

Nominations for this year’s award are due on January 30th, 2013.  Be sure to include all letters of recommendation, Individual Award Nomination form; and any other supporting documentation that are relevant.

The nomination committee is comprised of members of the WHMC Education and Leadership Committee.

The winner of this year’s award will be invited to accept their award at our Winter Conference in February 2013 in Hutchinson, Minnesota. 

Our overall goal with this award is to recognize those people in our communities who show the biggest leadership qualities.  This award is open to any team member at a property managed by Welcome Home.  Anyone can nominate, from family, to team members, to residents.

For nomination forms, please visit our website at: http://wtohdevelopment.com/NorthStarLeadershipAward.htm.  

Twin Town Villa expansion almost complete!

It seems like yesterday when we made the announcement that Twin Town Villa was expanding their community.  Where does the time go?

For those that drive by every day, you’ve seen our progress and have probably been wondering “when are we going to see then inside?”.  Well, that day is coming quickly for us.

As we sit today, our plan is to open in mid-February.  We don’t have a specific target date yet, but that will be coming in the next two weeks.  

Right now, we are beginning our process of hiring new team members to work in our memory care community.  If you are a dedicated, caring individual, who has worked with someone with memory loss, we would love to hear from you!  Contact Lisa, Director of Resident Services at (218) 643-9542.

We are very excited to welcome back to our company April Thompson as our Lead Care Manager in the memory care community.  April had previously worked with Welcome Home Health Care in another community in Alexandria.  April is a solid leader and we are excited to have her on our team.

As a side note, Twin Town Villa now has two former North Star Leadership Award winners working in Breckenridge.  April won the award in 2010, and Judi Durkin, Lead Care Manager in the assisted living community won in 2011!  What a solid team!

We have very excited about our new expansion project.  We’ll release more details as we get closer to our opening date.  Also look for the Grand Opening to happen in early March 2013.

For more information or to schedule your personal introduction to our community, contact Lisa at (218) 643-9542 or visit their website at http://wtohdevelopment.com/Breckenridge.htm

 

 

Orchard Hill gets ready to celebrate love

Orchard Hill Assisted Living Community is proud to present 9 of our 10 married couples with a combination of 477 years of blissful happiness! We will honor these couples with a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner with music and wine on February 14!

Health care meeting allows providers to voice concerns

Article by: Dean Bloemke, President of Welcome Home Management Company

This past Wednesday morning, I had the opportunity to attend a long term care leadership round table sponsored by Guardian Pharmacy of St. Cloud.  Representatives of a number of federal offices were there along with a number of state level senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle were in attendance.  The roundtable discussion was reported in the St. Cloud Times in their Thursday edition.  A copy of the article may be viewed at    http://www.sctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201209052032/NEWS01/309050044

I had the chance to tell those in attendance our story about health care costs under the new Affordable Health Care Plan also known as Obama Care.  In our company, if we choose to pay the penalty, our costs will increase by $170,000 according to an estimate prepared by our insurance agency.  If we choose to provide the insurance, our costs increase by $220,000.   The problem is, that there is not an adequate payment alternative to offset these increased costs.

Elderly Waiver, upon anywhere from 20% to over 50% of our client base depends, has had a decrease of 15 – 20% over the past three years.   This puts operating margins at risk, especially in these tough economic times.

Other providers mentioned that they were in the 5^th year of a pay freeze.

Rep. Steve Gottwalt, (R) mentioned in his remarks that long term care and assisted living are first in line to receive new funding when the revenues from increased tax collections derived from an increasing economy permit.

Other items mentioned were that Equalization should be repealed (Rep Gottwalt); that Electronic Funding & Implementation time schedules need to be extended (Rene Doyle of Michele Bachman’s office), that liability for readmission is causing a problem for nursing homes;  and also tort reform, and National Background Checks (Darwin Schwantes – Talahi Care Center) mentioned.

A question was asked about the difference between metro and rural economics of Assisted Living.  There was a long discussion regarding how rural assisted living has stayed close to providing the service in very nice properties and a relatively low cost.  That on average, each EW client in an AL property was saving the state on average of $1500 to $2500 per month for each client.

All legislators or their representatives were invited to take a tour of a rural senior living community and to become familiar with the economics of rural senior living.

Legislators or representatives of their office in attendance were:  Lisa Fobbe of Sen. Franken’s office; Rep. Steve Gottwalt; Renee Doyle of Congresswoman Bachmann’s office; Rep. King Banaian; Adam Schiff of Sen.  Klobuchar’s office; Sen. Michelle Fishbach; Rep. Tim O’Driscoll; Sen John Pederson, and Jeff Howe, House Candidate.

Providers in attendance were Darwin Schwantes of Talahi Care Center;  Deanna Johnson of Carefree Living AL in St. Cloud; Tami Rakke of Carefree Living, Deb REitmeier of Annandale Care Center, Phil Lord of Belgreade Nursing Home; and Jim Birchem of Eldercare in Little Falls.

Interested parties attending were Jeff Drown of Lyon Contracting and Brian Musech of Granite City Real Estate.

Trace Roller and Mark Boe of Guardian Pharmacy of St. Cloud were our hosts.

 

Recap of the WHMC Summer Workshop 2012 – It’s all about Teamwork

For the past two days, we’ve been hosting our Summer Workshop series here at Welcome Home.  Team members from each of our communities have been hear learning and sharing about a variety of topics.

As managers, from top to bottom, can feel like your on your own, trying to figure things out.  Twice per year, we bring in our management teams to have an opportunity to network with other communities and share best practices.  The key part in all of this is that we function as a team, and no one is ever alone.

We really have a wonderful team put together here at Welcome Home.  We have very talented people who really care about the residents and staff who work and live in our communities.  These sessions serve as an opportunity for them to make their communities a great place to call home.

We had many breakout discussions for each department…

 

We had a few general sessions for everyone…

 

 

 

 

And the outside speakers this year were fantastic!

 

 

At each of our summer workshops, we believe in hosting a team building event to draw each team closer.  This year it was an amazing race type of event.  Our group shot below was shot along the Crow River in Hutchinson.

 

 

 

As with each conference, it keeps getting better and better.

A giant thank you to all of our speakers!  We heard many great comments about how wonderful each of you were.

And finally thank you to all of the staff at Welcome Home for helping us put on another fantastic conference and workshop for our team members.

Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations/WHMC

Ground breaking ceremony held at Twin Town Villa

On Wednesday, July 25th, Twin Town Villa held their ground breaking ceremony for their new expansion project.

 

Several community members attended the event.  It was fun to see everyone get excited about what the project is going to bring to Breckenridge.

 

We had the official ground breaking ceremony.

 

We even had some residents and staff come outside to participate.  From the look on their faces, they seemed to be extremely excited for what’s to come.The equipment is all lined up and ready to start moving ground.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, this is a $3.5 million dollar expansion to Twin Town Villa and will bring additional assisted living apartments and a memory care community.

We expect to hire an additional 12-15 new positions to work in the community.  Over time, we expect that additional positions could be added based on level of care needed.

Welcome Home operates 7 senior living communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We’ve been providing a warm, homelike atmosphere for resident to call home since 1994 in many different states. Our goal is to focus on the individual residents needs. Over the past several years, we’ve seen and heard from residents and family members to add more service options. By adding these programs to our community, it gives older adults more options for their care and life experiences.

As we age, we want to live in a place that is fun, eat great food, and have our needs cared for.  We believe that adding this community, with the additional common areas such as the movie theater, additional apartments and care programs, gives our residents and their families what they’ve been looking for.

For more information about Twin Town Villa or Welcome Home Management, please visit our website at www.wtohdevelopment.com.  You can get an “inside look” in to the daily lives of our residents by visiting all of our communities Facebook pages.  A link to those can be found on our website as well.

 

HHS Bill Passes House and Senate, Awaits Governor Dayton’s Signature

News from Aging Services of Minnesota yesterday regarding the Health and Human Services Bill comes with some interesting notes.

According to Aging Services of Minnesota, the Health and Human Services Conference Committee bill passed both the House and Senate floors and now awaits Governor Dayton’s signature. In a year where there has been very little money available, lawmakers have placed a priority on senior care in funding and policy. Many of Aging Services and the Long-Term Care Imperative’s agenda items are included in the Conference Committee bill.

• The 1.67% Contingent Cut for waiver providers will not occur as originally scheduled on July 1, 2012.  This provision is important so that senior care providers do not see additional cuts on top of the double-digit cuts they have received in recent years. Although the hope is that the Level of Care waiver will be approved and the contingent cut will not be necessary, the contingent cut would occur on July 1, 2013 under this bill, and the cost of shifting the cut ($21M) is almost all that the bill spends in the second biennium;

• Changes to the mandatory transitional consultation process to include provisions that require DHS to develop protocols for hospitals and health-care homes to identify at-risk older adults to determine when to refer them to mandatory consultation. It further requires hospital discharge planners to refer people to the mandatory consultation prior to discharge; allows “responsible parties” to be able to make the call on behalf of the prospective resident; permits people in emergency situations to move prior to making the call and makes the following exemptions: people seeking lease-only arrangements, people who have previously received a long-term care assessment, people entering hospice, and, people that have used financial planning services and created a long-term care plan in the last 12 months.  DHS estimated that the requirement that hospital discharge planners provide referrals for consultation would produce $350 thousand in annual savings.

On the second point, we believe this is a step in the right direction.  Although not what providers had hoped for, this change in the mandatory consultation should help.  We still believe that consumers want good information to make informed decisions.

Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations at Welcome Home states: “I really believe that information is powerful for consumers.  And while I applaud lawmakers for taking a step in the right direction, I hope that we can move the discussion to an earlier point in life.  As consumers, if we know about our options earlier in life, we can begin to plan for our future.”

As the session progresses, we’ll continue to pass along information as it becomes available.  We also want to say thank you to Aging Services of Minnesota for being a great resource for providers and getting our concerns across to lawmakers.

Pinewood Derby–Baxter vs. Pillager at Excelsior Place

This week, Excelsior Place Assisted Living in Baxter, welcomed the Cub Scout Packs from Baxter and Pillager in for their derby car races.

Scouts from both cities came to for a day to see who had the fastest wheels between the two cities.

I’ve always thought that this would be fun for the residents to see in the community, especially for the guys.

Thank you to the Cub Scouts for coming out and showing off you cars!

Meeting of the Minds Dementia Conference 2012

This weekend, Welcome Home and some of our community representatives will be attending the Meeting of the Minds conference from the MN/Dakota Alzheimer’s Association in St. Paul.

We are proud to be one of the sponsors for this year’s event!

The Meeting of the Minds Dementia conference is the premier conference for persons with dementia, families, friends and professionals. The Alzheimer’s Association and Mayo Clinic invite you to join us for this day of inspiration and information.

Team members from Thomas Landing, Legends at Heritage Place, River Pointe and Twin Town Villa, will be attending sessions at this year’s conference as well as attending our booth in the exhibit hall.  Be sure to stop by and say hello!

If you would like more information on this event or would like to register, simply click on the link: http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=952142.

2012 Winter Conference is quickly approaching

Where does the time go when you’re having this much fun!?

This past year has been a fast paced one.  We’ve welcomed new faces to the organization and have had a great time getting to know them.  These new faces are getting ready to attend their first Winter Conference this week at Welcome Home.  It’s not only a great time to learn new things, but also an excellent time to network with other team members from our communities.

This year’s conference is packed and should offer great learning opportunities.

We’ve been planning this conference for almost two months, and this week, we see those efforts come to life!  With the opening session seemingly hours away, we are putting the finishing touches on the last minute details.

As with years past, this year’s awards program is going to be fantastic!  We will be awarding Best Community Award, Resident Choice Award, Employee Choice Award, and the North Star Leadership Award at the awards program.  The program will air live via our Welcome Home LIVE channel on Thursday at 2:30pm.

Can’t wait to see the whole team on Wednesday and Thursday!