Fueled with $3 million in grant money, Ecumen is looking to revamp the care it provides to people in rural communities. The $3 million it has received from the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation will be used to renovate the company’s Detroit Lakes facility, refurbishing old programs and creating new ones to not only fit a growing population of older Americans in rural areas, but to extend better care to everyone in the area.
“Right now, we have many residential lifestyles available — such as nursing homes, assisted living facilities, townhouses, memory care and so on,” said Steve Ordahl, Ecumen’s senior vice president for business and fund development.
“What we want to do with this money is take our Detroit Lakes facility and add managed care for all people. We want to add an Internet café where people can learn more about medicine and health. We want to add a therapeutic pool. We want to add telemedicine capabilities so people can conduct visits with doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland or the Mayo Clinic in Rochester without having to go there,” he said.
'We want this to be ageless'
The purpose is to create a facility that won’t feel like a nursing home, with a focus on “mind, body and spirit,” using yoga, nutrition training, education programming, and information on wellness and aging.
“We want this to be ageless,” Ordahl said. Becker County residents, which include those living in Detroit Lakes, can visit the clinic for therapy after hip or knee replacement. Young athletes can get therapy for sports-related injuries such as an ACL tear.
All this will be done in a rural setting, which is one of the MAC Foundation’s goals: to find a better life for the aging rural population. In most rural areas, health care is scattered between towns or doesn’t exist at all. By centralizing rural care, transportation issues will be simpler, collaboration between physicians and physical therapists will be easier, and the quality of acute and non-acute services will rise.
Ecumen’s goal is to make the model replicable. Using the $3 million grant, it can see what works, what doesn’t and what is financially feasible.
Looking to see what works
“I’m certain it will be successful, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Let’s use the Cargill money to see what works and what doesn’t and what we have to do to make it all work,” Ordahl said.
The project will cost $7.5 million, of which $3 million is coming from the MAC Foundation. There are some physical changes necessary at the Detroit Lakes facility. It was built in the 1960s and the design is now considered too confusing. For example, there’s no clear arrival area. When the redesign is finished, Ecumen wants Becker County residents to have no doubt that they are at a health-care facility for all residents, not just the elderly.
Why did Ecumen choose its Detroit Lakes facility for this project? The market was ready for it, Ordahl said, and it serves a vastly rural area. The building itself needed to be redesigned. And the administrator at the Detroit Lakes facility, Janet Greene, “is a great leader and will make these changes happen,” Ordahl said.
Why did the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation choose Ecumen for this project? When Cargill died in 2006, she established the foundation with a variety of goals, one of which is to “support services and initiatives that allow people to age in the communities of their choice,” according to Sallie L. Gaines, MAC Foundation director of communications. In fact, the foundation isn’t ready to begin making grants to support aging services, and probably won’t be ready to make grants for another three years, but Gaines said trustees have identified a few one-time opportunities to support projects that fit their priorities and will inform their planning process as they ramp up to grantmaking. Ecumen’s Detroit Lakes project fits the bill.
Would hope to replicate if successful
“We want to understand whether Ecumen’s approach is one that can be replicated in other regions or is the best model to serve residents of other areas,” Gaines said via email. “I cannot estimate how long it will take for the project to be evaluated accurately. I can say that the Foundation recognizes that many issues important to us cannot be addressed effectively in short time frames, and we therefore are willing to take long views with our grantmaking."
Architects are designing the facility now and will submit bids this spring. Construction will begin this summer, and the building will ready in late spring 2014, Ordahl said. The project will bring construction jobs to Detroit Lakes, and after the facility is complete, Ecumen will hire about 30 additional full-time employees.
Ecumen operates 70 facilities, most of which are in larger communities such as Mankato and Duluth. The company will decide which one to change next after assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Detroit Lakes facility.
In addition to Minnesota, Ecumen operates in Wisconsin, North Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska, and is building new communities in Tennessee and Michigan that it will manage for other owners.