A note from the Administrator

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1 10421 State Route 40, Granville, NY January 2018 UPCOMING EVENTS January nd Resident Council Meeting 3 rd Jungle Experience Zoo 9 th Al and Kathy Bain 23 rd The Bluebillies 26 th Resident Birthday Parties with The New Country Band February th Resident Council Meeting 6 th Valentine Sweetheart s ball with Elvis A note from the Administrator Happy New Year! We ended 2017 with many changes. A big change is our new name, Slate Valley Center. We are now part of Centers Health Care, a New York-based company with 42 long-term facilities in 3 states. It is exciting having the knowledge and resources this company brings to Granville. Some new department heads joined us this year. Marijo Natale is the Director of Recreation Services, Ginny Jordan is our Social Worker and Wendy Allen- Miller became the B-wing RN Unit Manager. We also added a diet tech, Ashley Manhey, who is working with Gretchen Petteys, Food Service Director and Stephanie Gulbrandsen, Dietitian, to implement a new menu and improve delivery of meals. These women bring excellent experience and enthusiasm to their roles and are anxious to meet every resident and their families. What is ahead for 2018? We are focusing on Quality! Each department is finding ways they can increase the satisfaction of every resident. We need your help. If you have an idea for a new activity or recipe, share it with us. If you have a concern about something, let us know. We want this to be a wonderful home for you, together we can make that happen. Let s make 2018 the year we all feel great pride in living and working at Slate Valley Center! 14 th Happy Valentine s Day 21 st Gerry Lemmo Janice Doughman

2 2 January 2018 A note from the Recreation Director Thank you for letting me be a part of this great place called Slate Valley Center. I joined the family of Slate Valley a little over a month ago and have absolutely enjoyed getting to know all the Residents and their Family. I will continue to learn who you are, who you were, and how I can care better for you. My first big event was our Holiday gathering for residents and their family. It was amazing to see such a great team working together to decorate, create, prepare, organize, and deliver a wonderful party/lunch for the residents. Everybody had a part on that special day, from the activities department, dietary, nursing, administration, housekeeping, maintenance, and our social worker. I would like to thank Dietary for making a fantastic lunch. They were able to serve over 200 people a 3 course meal in less than an hour (and the food was amazing).

3 January A note from our Recreation Director (Cont d) I would like to thank Don Williams for playing the part of Santa Claus. He sweat it out and was the perfect guitar playing Santa! I would like to thank Joyce for playing the piano in the large dining room for our Residents. Thank you to the families of our residents for taking time out of their busy schedules so we could all celebrate together. Truly in my heart I know this is a special place and I am honored and blessed to be working at your wonderful home. The kind of new beginning that transforms our lives is less about what we do in our lives, and more about what we deliver into the lives of others. Sincerely, Marijo Natale Director of Recreation

4 January January Resident Spotlight: Audrey Steenken Audrey Steenken was born and raised in Glens Falls, NY. She lived near Haviland Cove and spent many summers at the beach. She attended St. Mary s Alphonsus Catholic school in Glens Falls. On April 17, 1959, when she was 19 she met her husband Ed. Ed was home from the Air Force and was out on the town in Lake George. Audrey admits that she was quite the dancer and she enjoyed going out. Ed was very persistent, courting Audrey for the whole year. Audrey finally gave in, realizing that she could not stop thinking about this guy Ed after he moved to New York. Audrey contacted him and they were married 1 year after they met on April 17, Together they had 29 years together, 4 children, 11, grandchildren, and 9 great grandchildren. Questions for Audrey: What s the most important thing? Family is the most important thing! They visit me a lot. What advice would you like to give the younger generation? Love your neighbor, find peace, and always listen to your parents. She adds, don t be a bully! What is your favorite thing about Slate Valley Center? I never feel alone here. The staff is great, especially watching them with the other residents that need more help. They treat everybody with such kindness, it s very refreshing.

5 January Happy Birthday Horace Scott!! Horace Scott celebrated his 100 th birthday on December 25 th. Horace was born in 1917 in Poultney, Vermont and was raised in Whitehall. Horace Scott was the owner of Scott Funeral Home in Whitehall and Scott Furniture in Whitehall and Granville. Horace s birthday wish was to have 100 birthday cards and this wish was granted. He received over 100 cards from family and friends. It is easy to love Horace s gentle soul, a very kind man, with a warm heart! Happiest of Birth Years Horace!

6 6 January 2018 A note from Kenny In every edition of our newsletter, I try to share with you something interesting that I ve come across, or to let you know about some of the things that our staff and residents are involved in. I always look forward to the opportunity of sharing these stories with all of you, but without fail the January newsletter is my favorite of the year. I eagerly anticipate the start of each new year. There s so much hope and promise that accompanies the changing of the calendar. This week, as I reflected on the year just passed and the year ahead, I realized that what I should be writing about in this edition is a look back at all we accomplished and a look ahead at what we hope to bring to you in the future. This was such an exciting year, and 2018 holds so much that I hope I have enough space! The biggest impact on our Centers family this past year was certainly our expansion. Seven facilities in the upstate New York region joined us in September, but that wasn t all. Our application to purchase the Indian River facility in Granville, where we had been consulting for several years, finally came to fruition and Granville Center is now a full member of the Centers Health Care family. Two more facilities, one in Cooperstown and one in Utica, are in the process of joining us and we are consulting daily with both of them, bringing the Centers spirit of Heart Health Home to the people of Central New York. And our expansion continued with Beth Abraham Center in the Bronx, Martine Center in Westchester, Far Rockaway Center in Queens and Oak Hill Center in Rhode Island, which became our fourth facility in that state. All together they brought our total to 42 of the northeast s finest skilled nursing and rehabilitation facilities. We are exploring additional opportunities as I write this and I look forward to telling you about more new family members throughout the course of Despite the growing size of our family, we found plenty of time to continue our efforts to upgrade our existing facilities. I wrote in the fall about Williamsbridge Center in the Bronx which now has a whole new look, but extensive renovations took place this year in Deptford, Hammonton, Buffalo, Ellicott, Bannister, Triboro, Richmond, Bronx, Corning, our Neurobehavioral Center and at Northern Manor. More and more of our facilities are taking on the look of world class residences, to go along with the world class care they provide. In 2018, we ll near completion of a stunning new facility on Buffalo Avenue in Brooklyn that the Centers team designed from the ground up. Ongoing or new renovation projects are slated for Corning, Ontario, Holliswood and others. Activities and lifestyle weren t forgotten either, and many homes increased their recreational staff and activity offerings, but the most popular was surely the expansion of Centers therapy pony program. Happy Horse Visits are now being made regularly to more than twenty of our homes and we hope to include at least a dozen more in In the fall, we added our second Centers Urgent Care location. Centers Urgent Care in Brooklyn joins our successful walk-in center in Queens, where neighbors get exactly what they need they walk in, get seen, and go home seven days a week. This past spring saw the introduction of the Centers Health Care Patient Advocacy Award, an award that we plan to make an annual event to honor the dedicated social workers in every part of the health care industry who do so much, for so many. Spring also saw us playing a pivotal role in the launch of the Institute for Pressure Injury Prevention, an international group supported by Centers Health Care whose sole mission is to eradicate bed sores from health care institutions the world over.

7 January As always, improving care, with initiatives like the Institute for Pressure Injury Prevention is always first on our list of priorities and our continually decreasing rate of resident hospitalizations points to the success we ve had. We introduced on-site, facility staff physicians in locations thought-out the three states we serve so that our residents won t necessarily have to be sent out of their homes for doctor-prescribed medical treatment. We augmented that with significant expansion of our tele-medicine program. Using the very latest in technology, an off-site physician can now work with a skilled nurse specially trained in tele-medicine, to meet with a patient 24/7, review their condition and prescribe an appropriate course of care. The program has already shown itself to reduce trips to the hospital by as much as 80%, and more facilities will see telemedicine coming to them this year. In all of our facilities we increased the amount, level and complexity of our in-service training to ensure that our residents get the very best care and that our staff is trained and fully able to handle the most complex medical cases who, more and more, are requesting placement at a Centers Health Care facility. In 2018, we ll be adding more skills to our training sessions and introducing a brand new Career Ladders program to encourage and provide financial assistance to those on our nursing staff- CNAs, LPNs and RNs who want to begin taking classes toward their next level of education and advancement within the Centers Health Care family. It s certainly a long term goal, but we look forward to the day when we can point to a facility Director of Nursing and say that he or she began as a CNA who joined us without skills or nursing training, and worked their way to LPN, RN, Unit Manager and ultimately Director though our Careers Ladder program. While we re proud of these accomplishments and have set ambitious goals for the coming year, what I am most proud of, personally and professionally, are the outstanding, dedicated professionals that do so much, every day, for the people they serve. And to all of our residents, you are the people who make our communities the very special places they are. If you have chosen to make us your home or have come here for help in completing your recovery and rehabilitation, I want to assure you that we will continue to do all we can to provide you with the finest care, the most comfortable accommodations and a thriving, vibrant lifestyle. Sincerely, Kenny Rozenberg, CEO Renderings of the new Buffalo Center lobby and therapy gym.

8 8 January 2018 Employee of the Month For December Carrie Latrell Slate Valley Center Staff at a Holiday gathering hosted by Centers Health Care in December, 2017 Carrie has been a CNA at Slate Valley for 10 years. She works on the Rehab wing and she says her favorite thing about working here is the people at Slate Valley Center. She says it is easy to get attached to the Residents, but her coworkers is what has made the job most enjoyable. In the last year and a half she has had some health concerns, and had to endure the death of her step-father. Staff was very supportive to Carrie. She was able to take time off and was offered a lot of help. Also, in the last year and a half, her Mom became a resident at Slate Valley Center. Carrie knows her Mom is receiving the best care. Carrie feels blessed to have the Slate Valley family in her life! State Route 40, Granville, NY