Gifford Medical Center offers healthy cooking classesGifford Medical Center offers healthy cooking classesGifford Medical Center offers healthy cooking classesMenig awards Flood in
RANDOLPH, July 18, 2007 – To an audience of nursing home residents and staff, Patrick Flood Wednesday afternoon presented the Nursing Home Quality Award and $25,000 from state coffers to the Menig Extended Care Facility.
Vermont is the only state in the nation to recognize nursing home quality in this way, and it is remarkable that the Menig facility at Gifford Medical Center in Randolph has received this prestigious state award for the third consecutive year, said Flood, Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living (DAIL) commissioner.
“To win this award three times in a row is not an easy thing to do,” Flood said. “It really is quite an acknowledgement.”
Flood thanked Menig’s entire staff – housekeepers, volunteers, nurses and administrators – for working toward excellence. “When you all work together, you get high quality care.”
“It’s very hard to achieve this award and it takes every person working as a team to make this happen,” agreed Menig Administrator Linda Minsinger.
The Nursing Home Quality Award is based on the results of health and life safety surveys, cost effectiveness, a lack of substantiated complaints and resident satisfaction survey results. It recognizes “outstanding nursing homes, which have met high standards of quality of care for Vermont’s nursing home residents,” according to the state.
Menig also won the Gold Star Employer award from DAIL and the Vermont Health Care Association in May at a ceremony in Stowe.
The Gold Star award recognizes professional development that enhances staff retention and staff and resident satisfaction. Menig has also won this award since 2005 – the first year that it was offered. Additionally, Menig Director of Nursing Brooks Chapin of Chelsea received Nursing Director of the Year in 2005 from Vermont Health Care Association and charge nurse Judy Libby also of Chelsea was honored as Registered Nurse of the Year by the same association in 2006.
“We’re almost like the Yankees of nursing homes,” joked Gifford Administrator Joe Woodin, “and I’m a Red Sox fan, so that’s hard to say.”
Woodin thanked the state for recognizing quality with this award and told Menig staff and residents they should be “very proud” of their achievement.
Minsinger credited Chapin with making Menig such an outstanding nursing home. Chapin in turn thanked her staff. “You all make my job easy,” she said.
“I love this place,” Menig Medical Director Dr. Ken Borie said. “This is a great nursing home. It’s an honor to be part of it.”
The Menig facility was built in 1998 following the closure of Tranquility Nursing Home in Randolph and thanks to a generous gift from Braintree residents Howard and Gladys Menig, for whom the nursing home is named. Last year, Menig was expanded from 20 beds to 30 beds due to overwhelming demand for care.
Woodin noted that Flood was familiar with Menig’s history. He helped the facility receive state permission to expand and even once worked as an aide at Tranquility.
In Menig’s future will be further improvements thanks to this most recent state award. The $25,000 that accompanies the Nursing Home Quality Award in the past has paid for items such as plantings and birdfeeders for the courtyard garden located just outside Menig’s dining room, remote-controlled compact disc players for residents’ rooms, a flat screen television for the dining room, a whirlpool bathing chair, new table clothes and cloth napkins, curtains, field trips, entertainment programs and handmade quilts for residents’ beds. Residents will be asked how they wish spend to this year’s award and staff are also brainstorming ideas on what will improve residents’ quality of life.