Congratulations to the Mary’s Meadow basketball champs!


Congratulations to the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade teammates on the Mary’s Meadow Basketball Team for ending their 2010 season as Junior League Champs! The team, sponsored by the Sisters of Providence, was part of a competitive basketball program offered through the West Springfield Park and Recreation Department.

Rehab in a ‘homey atmosphere’
The following story and photos appeared in the Lifestyle section of the February 10, 2010 edition of The Springfield Republican.
The related interviews were conducted several weeks prior to publication.
Copyright 2010. The Republican Company. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Above, Tina Baronas, an occupational therapist assistant and rehab director at Mary’s Meadow at Providence Place in Holyoke, works with Pauline Vachon, of South Hadley, in the Woodland kitchen. At right, Nicholas Maratea, walks down the stairs during a therapy session while Margie Kedziorek, a physical therapist assistant, observes.

Pauline H. Vachon, of South Hadley, has been receiving therapy service at the new Mary’s Meadow at Providence Place in Holyoke, since mid November after having reconstructive foot surgery. “They wanted this to be a homey atmosphere. I’ll tell you, I feel like I’m at home. It’s wonderful.”

Vachon is one of the first short-term care patients at Woodland House in the complex, and she said the new model of providing therapy in a social model setting is effective, more effective than in an institutional setting. “You feel more relaxed. The total home-care feel is wonderful.”

Mary’s Meadow offers long-term skilled nursing care and short-term rehabilitation services with state-of-the-art rehabilitation services in a residential home setting.

It has four new separate residential homes connected to a central chapel, Our Lady of Providence Chapel.

Three of the one-story houses are for residents who need long-term care; the fourth is for patients in need of short-term physical, occupational and speech therapy.

“We may be a new facility, however our (five) therapists are anything but new,” said Jacqueline M. Boileau, admissions and marketing coordinator. “Each has more than 10 years experience in the Sisters of Providence Health System, proving to have excellent outcomes.”

Tina L. Baronas, an occupational therapy assistant and rehabilitation director at Mary’s Meadow, said the team of therapists works with people who have an array of diagnoses and “need to build up their strength and increase their functional skills to go home.” That includes cooking, washing, dressing, laundry and navigating stairs.

She said the new model of providing these services in a home setting “has worked out excellent.”

Of the three long-term care houses, one is designated for Sisters of Providence, another is half for sisters and half for lay persons, and the third is for laity.

Each new house has 10 private bedrooms and bathrooms along with shared areas like a living room, dining room and kitchen.

The full kitchen is especially helpful for patients who are working on regaining the necessary skills for cooking once they return home.

For those who reside at Mary’s Meadow, “It’s not home-like, it’s not homey; it is their home,” said Patricia E. St. Amand, director of communications for the Sisters of Providence Congregation. “It really feels like home.” St. Amand said Mary’s Meadow — which was blessed and dedicated in September — “is a whole new concept of care” that “gets away from the medical model.”

There are no nurse’s stations, though nurses are on duty along with physical therapists and elder assistants who are trained as nurse’s assistants but also have skills for working with people in rehab. The model is expected to be as attractive to those receiving care as it is to their families, physicians and caregivers.

“Our focus here is a social model where we engage our folks in living,” Boileau said. That means residents and patients have choices about the time they get up in the morning, when and what they eat. “In a traditional institution, it is more structured and rigid,” Boileau said. “Residents don’t have choices about when they get up, get dressed, eat. Our routine goes according to our residents and patients. Their schedule is not that of an institution.”

There is a 1 to 5 ratio of elder assistants in each house around the clock and a 1 to 15 ratio of registered nurses around the clock in the three long-term care houses. (That ratio is 1 to 10 in the short-term care house.)

In 1997 the Sisters of Providence’s infirmary, then located in Providence Mother House, was relocated to nearby Providence Hospital. That move occurred just before the sisters’ major renovation of the mother house into Providence Place, a rental retirement community for both sisters and lay persons.

At the time of that first relocation, the sisters’ leadership made a promise to the “infirmary sisters” that one day they would live even closer to the gold dome of their former mother house.

That promise was kept with Mary’s Meadow.

For more information, go to www.marysmeadow.org.

Directions to Mary’s Meadow