Instead of a traditional dormitory-type veterans home, the state Department of Veterans Affairs and members of the Veterans Home Task Force said they want it to look more like a neighborhood than a hospital.
The former Arkansas Veterans Home fit the more institutional model, as does the Fayetteville Veterans Home.
The newer model refers to greenhouses or cottages, several small homes each housing up to a dozen residents and a nursing assistant, state Veterans Affairs Director Cissy Rucker said. People who need similar kinds of care, such as for dementia or post-traumatic stress disorder, could be grouped together.
The old Arkansas Veterans Home, south of Interstate 630 in Little Rock, was a three-story brick building surrounded by a 6-foot-tall chain-link fence. Before it closed in June 2012, the main entrance was through a sliding-glass door guarded by a security officer. Residents shared rooms. In one room a green-and-yellow pinstriped curtain still hangs from a metal rod to give the illusion of privacy.
Task force Chairman Sen. Jane English, R-North Little Rock, said giving veterans a home, not an institution, is the point.
“There’s this common bond that they all have. It’s a common experience that you don’t find in other communities,” she said. “That’s really important for those folks to get together and have people that they can relate to.”
She said many people picture old institutional-style nursing homes with long sterile hallways and nothing for its residents to do.
“It was a lonely place for a lot of people,” she said. “Let’s find a way to make it not lonely.”
The cottage concept, created by Maryland geriatrician Dr. Bill Thomas, has been around for less than a dozen years. Task force member Rep. John Edwards, D-Little Rock, said he’s not yet sure that the cottages are the best fit for Arkansas.
“I still have an open mind on the issue, but I’m very confident that the traditional model will work well; the cottage model I’m still looking into,” Edwards said.
He said he is concerned that the cottage model will cost more and make it more difficult to monitor how staff members interact with residents.
The Green House Cottages of Southern Hills in Rison is one of a handful of facilities in Arkansas that have the cottage model. John Ponthie, an employee of the facility’s owner Summit Health Resources LLC, said the 7,500-square-foot cottages each cost $1 million to $5 million to build. Day-to-day operations at the cottages cost 5 percent to 7 percent more than at a traditional institution, he told the task force.
Located across from Rison Elementary School on Main Street, the six-home facility looks more like a new neighborhood than a nursing home.
At one cottage, a long, low porch shades three women in rocking chairs and the grill where residents have monthly cookouts. The front door opens to a living room with a flat-screen television and an assortment of easy chairs, many brought in by residents. Across the room, a library and back porch can be seen through an open door. A fireplace borders a long, wooden, dining-room table surrounded by chairs; and over a counter, residents watch as staff members make them something to eat.
Across the street, another cottage has the same layout, but different decorations. On a morning in mid-July, the television in the living room was off, and the kitchen was empty. A staff member sat chatting with a resident at a small table, and several residents were in their rooms getting ready for the day.
Each home has 12 private rooms, each with a window and an attached bathroom. Instead of a nurse pushing a cart to dispense daily medications, each room has a locked medicine cabinet. Residents can control only the temperature in their own rooms.
Some rooms are papered with photos of children and grandchildren; others have antique furniture - a 100-yearold bed or a favorite dresser.
Deston Blanchard has lived in the Southern Hills cottages since his wife died last winter. Blanchard, 91, said he was discharged on disability a year after joining the Air Force during World War II.
The facility has about five veterans, several of whom live in Blanchard’s cottage.
“It’s the best place for disabled veterans, no doubt about it,” he said.
His unit went to Australia and Papua New Guinea after he was sent back to Arkansas, he said.
“My boys, a lot of them never did make it back,” he said. He turned away and took a tissue from a nurse.
He said veterans should have an opportunity to live together in a place like the cottages.
“It’s a whole lot better than the old-type nursing homes where you had two to three to a room and they stole everything you have,” Blanchard said. “You couldn’t beat this.”CHANGING MODELS
Hundreds of nursing homes around the country fit the cottage model, but the Watkins-Logan Veterans Home in Tyler, Texas, was one of the first veterans facilities in the nation to try the concept. Other states, like Alabama and Utah, have since built cottage-style facilities.
Texas General Land Office spokesman Jim Suydam said by phone that the federal Department of Veterans Affairs promoted the cottage model, even though it is more expensive and requires more staffing.
“We had the opportunity, and it seemed like such a unique idea and we were excited to try it,” Suydam said.
Suydam said operation of the state’s eight veterans homes is funded through a veteran home loan program.
At the seven more-traditional homes in Texas, a shared room costs $146 per resident per day, he said. Residents at the Tyler home share the 10 bedrooms for $237 per resident per day, he said.
Suydam said veterans are overwhelmed by the new home.
“They are blown away,” Suydam said. “It’s just good to hear.”
George Martin, 87, who has lived in the Tyler facility for five months, agreed. Also speaking by phone, he said he has spent time in two traditional nursing homes.
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think there is a better place for me to be,” he said. “There’s no comparison to it.”
Martin said he and about a dozen other World War II veterans have teamed up.
“We have T-shirts. We go out and do things together, we go out to eat, go to museums, go fishing,” Martin said. “There’s quite a bit of visiting cottage to cottage.”
He said the chance to be active keeps him engaged in life.
“It just gives me a reason for being,” Martin said. “A very high percentage of our people are happy here, and that’s the key.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/22/2013