Vista Care earns top award for Alzheimer's care
By Jordan Cohen
MINERAL RIDGE
Caring for those suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s is perhaps the greatest challenge for every nursing-care facility.
Communicating with residents mostly incapable of responding requires extensive training for dealing with such everyday issues as personal hygiene, wandering and occasionally disruptive behavior.
For seven years, Vista Center at the Ridge, a 160-patient nursing facility, has operated a dementia-care program, which the owners and staff felt merited certification by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.
After an extensive examination, the foundation has agreed.
The national organization named Vista Center as a recipient of its Excellence in Care Dementia Program of Distinction Award – one of only two such facilities in Ohio to be certified by AFA. Certification covers a two-year period, and Vista will have to reapply in 2017.
“Wanting to achieve certification gave us the ambition to be stronger with our policy development and especially our training,” said Tracy D’Andrea, owner and chief operating officer of Vista Center and five similar care facilities in the tri-county area.
D’Andrea said Vista Center met the foundation’s stringent requirements. She cited extensive staff training in communications, behavior intervention and helping patients with eating and bathing. In addition, the foundation looked closely at management’s commitment. The review included an all-day, on-site visit.
“They evaluated our training tools, policy and staff credentials,” said Vicki Heller, clinical operations manager.
Heller said Vista maintains two dementia-care units: Nora’s Place for more than 40 women and Bratton Court with 24 men. She said the average age for most of the dementia-care recipients is 80 to 85.
One of Vista’s successful programs is “Music and Memory,” which Heller said helps reduce patient stress. She said the part of the brain that responds to music is one of the last to be affected by dementia.
“We work closely with the families to see what kind of music the residents like. We load it on iPods, and it seems to awaken them,” Heller said. She spoke of one resident with dementia who was regularly agitated at sundown. The staff tried playing music, and it worked.
“He sat quietly in his chair, calm and more relaxed, and was even tapping time with his fingers,” Heller said.
In a ceremony Thursday, the staff had a formal certification announcement, while a number of residents sat nearby at tables or in wheelchairs.
David Tikkanen, Vista administrator, said the award is as much about them as it is for the management and staff.
“This is a labor of love,” Tikkanen said. “Caring for people who built this community is award enough.”