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The Willows at Hamburg Executive Director Robert Hollins. PHOTO BY ABBY LAUB
Thanks to a newly opened health center, seniors in Kentucky have access to three different levels of care in one facility.
The Willows at Hamburg, operated by Louisville-based Trilogy Health Services, offers assisted living, skilled nursing services and memory care all in a centralized location on Old Rosebud Road near the Hamburg shopping center in Lexington. The business model is a new one for the area, said The Willows Executive Director Robert Hollins.
“The business model is geared toward offering all three levels of care, starting with assisted living,” he said. “That is pretty much our business model for most of the Trilogy homes. There are some that even offer independent living condominiums ... That does pretty much follow the trend of what consumers now need and desire. They don’t like to be relocated. They don’t want to start out at independent living at one location and then move to another location.”
That edge, he said, is what will help The Willows be competitive with the race to accommodate aging baby boomers and changing health-care laws.
The Willows at Hamburg is the first of Trilogy’s locations but the sixth in Kentucky. There are 73 Trilogy locations nationwide (in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois). A second Lexington campus is also in the works because the demand is there, particularly for the tri-level approach, Hollins said.
The approach doesn’t necessarily save senior citizens a lot of money, but it saves a great deal of stress and readjustment woes.
Another unique approach taken at The Willows, Hollins said, is the increased level of resident satisfaction. Fresh flowers and linen coverings don the dining room tables, and all meals are chef prepared.
“All of our meals are following a concept of restaurant-style dining,” he said. “When you do give up living independently in your home, that’s a big sacrifice, so you want to focus on things that are still important, like the quality of the food and the experience living in this new environment. We do a lot above and beyond most competitors in dining services.”
The Willows at Hamburg also allows for one family night a month, allowing family members to come dine at no additional cost to the residents.
Also, The Willows has a family call program, where each resident is assigned a management team leader who contacts family members at least monthly to find out any concerns and get feedback both ways.
Customer satisfaction surveys are done twice per year. Hollins said industry standard is once per year. He also stressed the grueling employee-selection process.
“You can come here and live — you couldn’t ask for a nicer atmosphere — but if the employees don’t give good customer service, then that defeats the purpose,” he said. “The company firmly believes that employees who come into contact with residents the most are the most important employees.”
The Willows at Hamburg has been taking reservation deposits since March and expects to be filled up before too long. Hollins noted increased demand from an aging population.
Community Services Representative Susan Parker said when the skilled living facility was built, The Willows was told it was the first new skilled-living facility in Lexington in 20 years. It shares the main building with The Residence, and The Legacy, a specialized memory care neighborhood, is housed next door.
All of the rooms are furnished, but residents also are welcome to bring their own furniture. The Willows at Hamburg also offers activities to seniors in the community who are not residents.
A horse theme is carried out in the facility and each “neighborhood” is named after a famous Kentucky horse farm, Parker pointed out.
The Willows at Citation is scheduled to open in the second half of 2013 and will include 54 accommodations in its health-care center (skilled living), and 36 in its assisted-living residence.
The Willows at Hamburg features 54 health-center accommodations and 40 assisted-living accommodations. The Legacy at The Willows, the specialized memory care neighborhood, will accommodate 35 residents.
In the face of worrisome economic climates, changing health-care laws and a quickly aging population, Trilogy Health Services President/CEO Randy Bufford said regardless of what it looks like, the need for quality senior-health services will continue to grow due to our population’s increased aging.
“The needs and expectations of consumers continues to change, and through listening to your customers and responding to their feedback, you can continue to grow to meet their future needs,” he said. “Reimbursement and regulatory changes can pose challenges, however our approach has always been to proactively plan for these changes to ensure that our quality of care and scope of services delivered to our resident is not impacted. We frequently discuss continuous improvement and how we can adapt to the regulatory and reimbursement changes and stay committed to our mission statement of compassionate customer service.”
Bufford added, “We believe many features of the Affordable Care Act will be consumer friendly for seniors and employees alike. The trends towards consumerism will be favorable to customer-centric organizations like Trilogy.”
Slowing consumer health-care spending, though, has displayed itself to Trilogy.
“We have, too, experienced softness, and we find people [not] wanting to make decisions to move to assisted living until a crisis occurs — more of a reactive versus a proactive stance,” Bufford said. “Offering a variety of service levels as well as a full continuum of care has allowed Trilogy to continue to grow during this spending slowdown. We remain confident that with the aging boomers, there is a demand for senior-living services, and this sector will continue to grow.”
Kentucky’s locations for expansion were selected for a variety of reasons. He credited demand, proximity to hospitals, current and future demographics in the area, current senior-living providers in the area and proximity to other Trilogy communities.