Senior Living Blog & Events

Dear Village at Belmar Assisted Living & Memory Care Residents & Families: 

We want to let you know that an Independent Living resident in one of the Village at Belmar Flats (the detached Independent Living apartments) has tested positive for COVID-19.  The resident first began experiencing symptoms on April 27^th, was tested at a doctor’s office on May 1^st and received the results confirming COVID-19 on May 3^rd.  The resident’s current condition will allow self-isolation in the resident’s flat during recovery.  We wish the resident a speedy recovery and will help coordinate support as requested.

The Flats are the detached buildings across the campus from the Assisted Living and Memory Care building.  This intentional design provides a natural separation and increased safety for all of you during times like these when non-communal dining and activities are necessary.  It is important for you to understand that the Independent Living Flats are a non-licensed living environment, and that our Assisted Living license does not allow for us to provide care to our Independent Living residents.  Because we do not provide care to the Independent Living residents, we have been able to maintain practice of six feet of social distancing with these residents since mid-March.

In conjunction with how our normal course of operations were altered in mid-March for Assisted Living & Memory Care residents, we suspended communal dining and communal activities for the Independent Living residents at the same time.  Since that time, no Independent Living residents have been allowed in the Assisted Living & Memory Care building.  Please rest assured that we effectively eliminated staff crossover between our Independent Living residents and those residing in Assisted Living & Memory Care.

All of these protocols were established through consultation with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), our skilled and capable clinical team and our Medical Consultant, Dr. Gagandeep Singh.

Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our residents, families and associates.  If you have any further questions, please reach out to Village at Belmar’s Executive Director, Michael Ruback.

Sincerely, 

Tom and Susie Finley – Founder and Principal

April 28, 2020 at 4:00 pm

Dear Residents, Families & Associates:

Thank you all for the continued support you continue to provide for Village at Belmar and Pine Grove Crossing.  We hope you are getting outside to enjoy this warmer weather, it seems as though we are all ready for sunshine and it should do us some good!  We want to provide you with an update on our communities as well as some of the key items we are working through.  We are pleased to report that we continue to be free of any active COVID-19 positive residents or associates for both Pine Grove Crossing and Village at Belmar.  

While we are happy to report to you that we have no positive COVID-19 cases, we are not relying on our encouraging results thus far to propel us through this challenging time.  We have been spending a great deal of time working on customized policies and procedures for both communities in a proactive manner to prepare for various ‘what if’ scenarios.  We spent the first part of this week completing isolation plans for both communities, should we have a positive case of COVID-19 in the future, and we feel very good about all of the planning that went into preparing this document.  As we learn more from colleagues who have experienced positive cases in their communities, there are clearly some best practices that we are seeing from in order to protect infected residents or associates, and contain any future potential spread of the virus.  

We also continue to collaborate with colleagues from across the country on best practices and ideas on managing COVID-19 if a positive resident or associate is identified in the community.  We have recently spent time with colleagues from Seattle who have lived through the initial epicenter of the virus outbreak in the country, dating back to early February.  We are finding that other senior living providers are collaborating on best practice methodologies to keep residents and associates safe in ways we’ve never seen before.  

It warms out hearts to see all of the pictures and great feedback from the “Window Visit” programs.  We hope that you are enjoying getting to ‘visit’ with your loved ones.  Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make these visits more enjoyable.  

We continue to stay abreast of our PPE supply (i.e., masks, isolation gowns, gloves & hand sanitizer), and are keeping close tabs on usage as necessary to keep everyone safe and healthy.  We have six to seven legitimate PPE vendors with varying lead times, whose product is produced both domestically and also internationally.  We have found that it is a daily exercise to keep in touch with these important suppliers, and monitor when shipments are scheduled to arrive, and ensure that they do ultimately make it to our communities.  We feel fortunate to have a good supply of PPE at this time, and also the multiple reliable suppliers to get these much needed supplies to us on a timely basis.   

While we continue to follow the protocol for all residents and associates that was previously established through consultation with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), our skilled and capable clinical team, and our Medical Consultant, Dr. Gagandeep Singh, we continue to update operating procedures to keep our residents and associates safe from this virus.  

Finally, we are so proud of our associates who are on the front lines to keep all of our residents safe and healthy.  Their dedication to showing up day in and day out, and being so very cognizant of their actions when they are not at work and how those actions may affect those who live in our communities.  It is a true testament of their dedication that they remain vigilant day and night, and we are so thankful for this.  We very much appreciate the meals provided by so many families to our associates, we can tell you first hand that the smiles on their faces and the ‘thank you’ voiced during those meal times are plentiful.  

We are also happy to communicate that we will be implementing in May an associate grocery purchase program.  With food supply chains not working as they were two months ago, we are able to obtain good pricing from our bulk food service provider on items that many of us typically buy at our local grocery stores, and in residential quantities and sizes.  As a benefit to our associates to help keep their families fed and to reduce another errand after work, our associates will be able to order groceries from our food service supplier using our bulk purchasing power, pay for them via a paycheck deduction, and know that the grocery items they choose for their family will be there on the pickup date. 

If you have any further questions, please reach out to Village at Belmar’s Executive Director, Michael Ruback, or Pine Grove Crossing’s Executive Director, Rita Waxon. 

Sincerely,

Tom and Susie Finley – Founder and Principal

April 13, 2020 at 11:00 am

Dear Residents, Families & Associates:

We wanted to take an opportunity on this snowy Monday to touch base with all of you.  As you have likely seen in the news, numerous cases of COVID-19 have been identified in senior living communities in Colorado.  We are pleased to report that we are free of any active COVID-19 positive residents or associates for both Pine Grove Crossing and Village at Belmar.  Our hearts go out to our colleagues in the industry with current outbreaks as we continue to fight this invisible enemy on a global scale day in and day out.  

Amid all of difficult news, we are excited to introduce a new ‘window visit’ program that we will be initiating this week to let residents and families visit with one another while safely separated by a glass door at the community.  These visits will be established for our Assisted Living and Memory Care residents at the communities.  We will work over the next several days to finalize the details of the program, so please look for future communication from your Executive Director later this week on details of the program.  Through a Sign-Up Genius program, we hope to accommodate weekly visits for loved ones that are able to visit the communities in person.  For those of you with loved ones that reside on the first floor of our communities, please feel free to continue your impromptu window visits as you have been for the last few weeks.  

We also wanted to let you all know that over the next ten to fourteen days, we expect to be receiving thousands of additional pieces of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), including masks, gloves and gowns.  This precious PPE has been extremely difficult to source over the last month.  However, we have been working hard to identify new suppliers of this PPE, many of whom have supply chain contacts in China that have re-tooled their factories from making product such as furniture to now producing high volumes of FDA approved PPE.  

Also, last week we were able to source a laboratory to provide COVID-19 testing kits and test results back to us very quickly.  This laboratory’s focus has historically been testing for Urinary Tract Infections, but has added COVID-19 testing over the last few weeks.  This company had previously only worked with physician offices and skilled nursing facilities, but Ascent was the first Assisted Living company that signed up with this lab.  We can access a limited number of tests per day per community based on physician orders, and the samples are sent via FedEx to the laboratory.  Results are guaranteed to us within 24 hours of the labs’ receipt of the test.  So far, we have processed two tests with this company (both with negative results), and the results are coming back to us only a few hours after the lab receives the FedEx package.  We are pleased to have access to quickly test anyone we screen with symptoms, accompanied by a physician order, so we can remain proactive and in front of any diagnosis.  

While we continue to follow the protocol for all residents and associates that was previously established through consultation with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), our skilled and capable clinical team, and our Medical Consultant, Dr. Gagandeep Singh, we are updating some operating procedures to keep our residents and associates safe from this virus.  

On Friday, April 10^th we made the difficult decision to no longer allow third party hospice providers to enter into Village at Belmar or Pine Grove Crossing.  We are encouraging our hospice providers to utilize telemedicine to work with their patients and will supplement routine hands on care with our own associates.  We will of course make exceptions for emergent or end of life situations.  Knowing that the staff of our hospice providers are out and about in the general community every day, we believe severely restricting their in-person visits will bring an added layer of protection to help keep our residents and associates safe and healthy.  

We are so very proud of our associates at Pine Grove Crossing and Village at Belmar who selflessly work hard morning, noon and night to care for our residents.  We continue to choose times to provide a catered meal our associates to help ease the stress of the work week.  We also implemented a program utilizing our food service vendor to provide a fully stocked grocery box for our associates to take home so they can have one less grocery store task to complete during their day.  And we would like to publicly thank the family member of one of our residents for truly going above and beyond over the last week.  This particular family member lives in New York, and paid for a Chick-Fil-A meal for all of our associates, including all three shifts, for both of our communities.  Words can hardly describe our heartfelt appreciation for this unbelievable token of kindness.  And we of course would like to thank the many others who have provided baked goods and letters of recognition and encouragement for our teams.    

Finally, we wanted to end this letter to you on a positive note from last Friday.  Last week at Village at Belmar, we had two residents turn 100 years old within a few days of each other.  In what can only be described as one of the best birthday parties over the last month, our two newest centenarians were treated to a parade by the Colorado State Patrol, Lakewood Police and West Metro Fire who circled through the community in their official vehicles with lights flashing and well wishes for these two special birthday ladies voiced through their loud speakers.  With the weather in the upper sixties and the sun shining, our residents and associates enjoyed this parade outside in the parking lot with appropriate social distancing standards in place, and everyone dawning their protective face masks.  Following this parade was a joyful and boisterous singing of the Happy Birthday song from all of those in attendance, including Lakewood Mayor Adam Paul.    

With Passover and Easter being two important religious holidays for many, we recognize that this year’s festivities may have looked quite different than in years past.  We wish you time of peace and happiness whether you celebrate these holidays or not. 

If you have any further questions, please reach out to Village at Belmar’s Executive Director, Michael Ruback, or Pine Grove Crossing’s Executive Director, Rita Waxon.  

Sincerely,

Tom Finley and Susie Finley