On April 26, Poydras Home offered a preview of a $23 million renovation and expansion that is designed to transform the way its nursing home residents live. The new buildings will support the senior living provider’s new status as a Green House Project community.
Introduced nearly two decades ago by a Maryland-based nonprofit, the Green House approach downplays elements of institutional care in favor of a more home-like environment.
“Today, the head of our hospitality department is doing culinary training with our care partners,” said Erin Kolb, Poydras Home CEO, at the event. “They will be cooking meals. Laundry will be done in a home, just like you and I live in. And that is one of the core values of a Green House home: creating meaningful life each day for the elders who live in that home and having a dedicated team of empowered staff to provide care.”
At Poydras Home, nursing home residents now will be divided into individual “houses” — actually six wings of two three-story buildings — that either hold 12 or 14 people each. The houses are linked by a glass atrium. In each, private rooms surround a community living space that features multiple living areas, a family-style dining room, fireplaces and a giant kitchen, where all meals will be prepared.
All this is designed to support the Green House goal of “transforming institutional long-term and post-acute care by creating viable homes that demonstrate more powerful, meaningful and satisfying lives, work and relationships.”
To meet this goal, staff members are undergoing roughly 60 hours of “universal worker” training to learn how to provide all aspects of care, from medical assistance to preparing meals.
In an effort to make the facility feel more like a home, staff members will no longer wear scrubs. And, in every way possible, the facility is designed to look less like a hospital and more like a home. So, equipment to lift patients from their beds is only installed if necessary, and the equipment itself is designed to be unobtrusive.
By the end of May, Poydras Home’s 64 nursing home residents will move from their current homes to the new buildings, which were designed by EskewDumezRipple and built by DonahueFavret Contractors.
Jack Sawyer, a principal at Eskew and the lead architect for the project, said the design team visited several other Green House facilities to help brainstorm ideas for the new buildings.
“In 2020, we visited several homes in Florida,” he said. “The most inspirational part for me was hearing from the caregivers about the powerful effect the home-like environment had on their guests. They told the story of a woman who had come from a very institutional environment and had really shut down and was really just in her own head. Having her sit in the kitchen and smell the onions cooking really brought her out of her shell. It was a huge transformation of quality of life.”
For the rest of this story, visit bizneworleans.com/poydras-home-unveils-23m-expansion-and-completely-new-model-of-care.
Did you know? Founded in 1817 for the female children of widows left destitute by New Orleans’ yellow fever outbreaks, the community that would later be called Poydras Home was first known as the Female Orphan Society.
