New Hubbard Hill facility in Elkhart provides fresh approach to dementia care

ELKHART — Suzie Phillips has been caring at home for her husband Truman, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014. He’s in the middle stages of the disease and they’re both ready for another level of care.

He’ll move from their home at a lake in southern Michigan to become one of the first patients at the new Living Wisdom Center for Dementia Care.

“This is perfect for my husband’s needs right now,” she said as she sat in the atrium that is a distinctive part of the new center. “They are going to do everything to help my husband to feel normal, to feel wanted, to feel needed.”

The new center is getting much attention. It’s hard to miss the giant glass atrium along Indiana 19 on Hubbard Hill’s campus south of Elkhart. What those opening the center are emphasizing is after the buzz is gone, the center will offer innovative, long-term memory care.

Thirty-six residents will live in private rooms and be part of four households. The fronts of the four sections are constructed in different styles and the furnishings inside match the Tudor, Craftsman, Farmhouse and Colonial styles. In the kitchen/dining rooms of each, residents will work with staff to prepare meals and eat together.

The four “households” all connect to the large glass atrium, which covers a courtyard that includes plants and activity areas. In addition to kitchens where residents can help, the center will afford them the chance to do woodworking, gardening and tinker on cars. The premise of the care is to help people do activities that were part of their lives prior to the diagnosis that often brings so much loss, said Barb Kauffman, whose title is “strategic storyteller” but is practically the commercial project manager for Hubbard Hill.

Five years ago, Hubbard Hill started a conversation about how to offer memory care.

“They literally started with a white board,” said Kauffman. They utilized some of the research from Stephen Kellert of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, an expert on biophilic design and how people connect with nature. They traveled to other memory care units around the country and emulated Hogewey, a Dutch village where more than 150 residents are helped to live normal lives.

Debbie Carriveau was a consultant helping Hubbard Hill and is now executive director of the new 50,000-square-foot unit. Though the term “person-centered care” gets used a lot in the industry, at this center it will mean that staff will work to connect residents with who they were in the past. Social isolation and disorientation is often as painful as the loss of memory for patients, so this center will work to learn patients’ stories and involve them in the community by working at Church Community Services or making pet treats for the Humane Society of Elkhart County.

They want to create an environment that feels like family.

“It was an opportunity for us to fix all the things we saw that weren’t working in traditional health care,” Carriveau said.

At Hubbard Hill, all the staff undergoes 40 hours of hands-on training, a higher standard than the state requirement, to learn how to do the care that Kauffman and others hope distinguishes the facility as one of the best in the country.

Kimberly Middleton has been a nurse for 33 years and worked in memory care for about 10 years. She came to work in the new center from another facility and is eager to use her knowledge to work in a different way.

“This is not focusing on disease, but focusing on the care, the individual,” she said. “The person doesn’t get lost.”

Instead of having her hands on a cart, she’ll be able to interact with residents and not just cook with them, but sit and eat with them at a family dinner table. She’s shed tears of joy as she and a team of several dozen people prepare for residents.

Kauffman said the cost to families for Hubbard Hill’s care at the center is in line with other facilities in the area. It is licensed as assisted living and won’t offer Medicare beds, said Carriveau. A golf outing to raise money and awareness for the center is planned for 10:30 a.m. today at Elcona Country Club and will feature Olympic skater Dan Jansen.

As of Thursday, 18 people were approved to move in. The first ones will arrive this week. Mr. Phillips will soon be one of them.

“This is a godsend,” Phillips said. “Exactly what my husband needs.”