Honoring Our Veterans with Better Skilled Nursing Homes
What better way to honor our veterans than to help them live comfortably and independently into their golden years? For Veteran’s Day, we wanted to highlight The Green House ® Project—a grantee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Burness client focused on reinventing the nursing home experience for older Americans—which is taking steps to improve the lives of those who have served our country.
The Green House Project creates small, skilled nursing homes that offer high levels of medical care with the intimacy and community of a home. On October 21, 2011, The Veteran’s Administration opened Freedom House, its first Green House home, in Danville, Ill. At the Freedom House opening celebration, Christa Hojlo, National Director for VA Community Living Centers, Veterans Health Administration, explained why the VA sees the Green House model as a long-term alternative to traditional nursing homes.
More videos on the Green House Project’s work with veterans are available online. The Green House Project was also featured in a recent New York Times article titled “A Nursing Home Shrinks Until It Feels Like A Home.”