COMING OF AGE
Keysville Nursing Home receives Excellence in Action award after ranking in top 5 percent
By Elizabeth Billips

A group of Keysville Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center employees gather outside to celebrate their award. Collectively, the group has worked there close to two centuries. STAFF - ELIZABETH BILLIPS

L ois Parrish didn't like nursing homes.

When she was just a girl, her mother, a gospel music performer, would drag her along every weekend to sing for the old folks.

"It was terrible," she recalls, glancing back toward Keysville Nursing Home where she spends most of her days now. "I remember people begging us to take them back home."

Her old sorrow melts like snow as she pushes through the glass doors. At this nursing home, she knows things are different.

The social worker-turnedadministrator has been working in Keysville since 1996, a year after her mother moved from South Carolina to become a resident.

Now, after three years at its helm, Parrish says her main prerogative is holding the nursing home to the same reputation that drew her across state lines a dozen years ago.

And it must be working.

Administrator Lois Parrish, second from right, chats with residents Dorothy Puckett, 80, Katherine Nyard, 83, and Mary Lou Jones, 86.

Keysville Nursing Home was recently awarded the Excellence in Action award, based on satisfaction levels reported by residents and their families.

According to Brad Shiverick, Chief Quality Officer for InnerView Management Intelligence for Healthcare, the facility's overall satisfaction levels are in the top 5 percent.

So what sets this nursing home apart from the tens of thousands of others in the nation?

"It's the little things," Parrish says, pointing out the cloth tablecloths, murals and other small details aimed at making the facility feel like home to its 64 residents.

Then there's the 74-member staff.

"My staff considers the residents family," she explains as she pops her head into the beauty parlor where a patient and nursing assistant are talking 90-to-nothing. "They listen to them, love them, touch them, hug them."

That connection, Parrish says, is the bread and butter of a happy environment.

"This is truly a team effort ... it takes every single person from housekeeping to the kitchen," she says, noting that employees participate alongside patients in everything from calisthenics to beauty pageants. "We try to have laughter and fun."

It doesn't go unnoticed by residents like 86-year-old Mary Lou Jones, who admits getting ornery if her son doesn't arrive with her daily newspaper by 10 a.m.

"I like the way they keep me busy," she says. "Especially on Saturdays and Sundays when I tend to get lonely."

The halls become busy as residents file out of their exercise class and mingle with staff and regular volunteers.

Parrish is congratulated by one of those volunteers - a person, like her, whose ties have held strong despite the passing of his mother two years ago.

"Change starts at the top," he reminds Parrish while she insists that credit for the big award should go to all the others.

Parrish weaves her way back to the lobby, looking back on the last dozen years as more of a gift than a job.

"This is the easiest job in the world," she says, patting shoulders and hugging necks along the way. "It's like I've been given a hundred mothers and fathers."