New transitional care center located near Integris Southwest Medical Center

StoneGate Senior Living CEO John Taylor announces that Accel at Crystal Park celebrated the grand opening on February 23, 2017. Located at 315 SW 80th St, Oklahoma City, Accel at Crystal Park is currently completing local and state inspections and is expected to begin admitting patients the first week of April. The facility will be fully open immediately thereafter.
The new transitional care center, near Integris Southwest Medical Center. represents the second new health care center developed in the Oklahoma City market-area by Lewisville, Texas-based StoneGate Senior Living. The first—Medical Park West Rehabilitation—is located adjacent to Norman Regional Health System’s HealthPlex Hospital in Norman.
Accel at Crystal Park features 59 private transitional care suites designed for patients recovering from an acute care event. All patient suites will offer modern amenities and technologies—flat-panel TVs, Wi-Fi—and a high-quality dining experience, with meal service available in patient rooms and the center’s dining room. Accel’s rehabilitation gym will offer modern equipment and technologies that help patients complete post-acute rehabilitation as quickly as possible and return to their lifestyle.
StoneGate’s web-based EHR software will be utilized at Accel, facilitating easy access to important patient health information by physicians and other providers, as well as transparent sharing of clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction data with physicians and acute care partners. Expected patient length-of-stay at the transitional care center will vary based on diagnosis, and the expected overall average length-of-stay is 15 to 25 days. Accel’s overarching mission will be to rehabilitate patients as quickly as is clinically feasible. Accel at Crystal Park’s architecture and interiors are designed to complement the look and feel of local real estate, and will offer the same attention to architectural and design details as Medical Park West in Norman.
StoneGate Senior Living manages 42 properties across Texas and Oklahoma, and is currently developing two new transitional care properties in Colorado and another in College Station, Texas. Recently ranked as the nation’s 31st largest transitional and long-term care company by Provider magazine, StoneGate is a fully-integrated post-acute health care company, with service-lines and business units that offer transitional care, long-term care, assisted living, memory care, rehabilitation, wellness, home health, pharmacy, care navigation and post-acute analytical services.

by Sheila Kennedy-Stewart, MSN, RN, CMSRN

As many nurses know today, the hospitals remain full. Unit nurses are faced with taking additional patient loads and emergency departments are over run and holding admitted patients due to no unit bed availability. Throughput comes to a standstill.
Throughput is a number one strategic priority of Integris Southwest Medical Center. Improving patient throughput by setting high goals, ensuring the goals are transparent to all the organization and meeting these goals in a timely manner are priorities of Leadership for this institution. Recently, Leadership of this hospital was not just merely voicing support – but was putting these goals into action.
With the ER holding sixteen patients to be admitted and less than a handful of rooms available for seeing new emergent patients, the leaders of Patient Care Services and the Emergency Department acted. With no additional nursing staff to open and staff an overflow unit, leadership of both these departments opened the floor with themselves as floor staff. This is True Nursing Leadership.
Kim Brewer, Patient Care Services Manager; Kelly Savas, House Supervisor; Tela Brown, Emergency Department Director; Jacob Lovell, Emergency Department Manager; and Todd Hendricks, Emergency Department Team Lead opened the overflow medical unit and began receiving patients from the ED. Within a few hours, ten patients had been admitted to the floor, assessed and orders initiated or continued for the quality care of these patients.
This is leading by example in its highest form. These nursing leaders are transformational leaders who exemplify our nursing philosophy. Integris Southwest is fortunate to have this caliber of nursing leadership in the ranks. Kudos!

Dear Savvy Senior,

When my father passed away a few months ago we had him cremated, but are now wondering what to do with his ashes. My sister and I would like to do something celebratory for his life, but aren’t sure what to do. Any suggestions?

No Instructions Left

Dear No,
If your dad didn’t leave any final instructions on what to do with his cremated remains (ashes), you have a wide array of choices. They can be kept, buried or scattered in a variety of ways and in many locations. Here are some different options to help you decide.
Keep Close By: For many people, keeping the ashes of their deceased love one close by provides a feeling of comfort. If you fit into this category, you could keep his ashes in an urn on the mantel or in a cabinet, or you could also scatter some of them into your lawn or garden, shake them into a backyard pond or dig a hole and bury them. Another possible option is eco-friendly urns (like UrnaBios.com or EterniTrees.com) that contain a seed that grows into a tree or plant after being buried.
Cemetery Options: If you want your dad’s final resting place to be at a cemetery, you have several choices depending on how much you’re willing to spend. With most cemeteries, you can either bury his ashes in a plot, or place them in cremation monument, a mausoleum, or a cemetery building called a columbarium.
Scatter Them: If you want to scatter his ashes, to help you chose an appropriate location, think about what your dad would have liked. For example, did he have a favorite fishing spot, camping area, golf course, beach or park that held a special meaning? These are all possibilities, but be aware to that if you choose to scatter his ashes in a public location or on private land, you’ll need get permission from the management, local government or the land owner.
National parks, for example, require you to have a permit before you scatter ashes. If you wish to dispose of them at sea, the Environmental Protection Agency asks you be at least three miles from shore. Beach scatterings are also illegal in some states, including California, but are rarely enforced. And many public areas, like Central Park and Disneyland prohibit scattering ashes too, as do most professional and college sports stadiums.
Untraditional Methods: If you want to do something truly unique with his ashes, you have many choices here too, but they can get pricy ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. Here are several to consider.
Scattering by air: This free-spirited option lets you spread your dad’s ashes into the sky so the particles can be taken by the wind. To do this, you could hire a private plane, helicopter or hot air balloon service, or use a balloon scattering service like EternalAscent.com or Mesoloft.com. Or, you could even send his ashes into outer space with ElysiumSpace.com.
Scattering by sea: If your dad loved the water, there are many businesses that offer ash scattering services at sea, especially close to coastal areas, or you could rent a boat and do it yourself. There are also companies like EternalReefs.com that offer reef memorials so your dad’s ashes can rest on the ocean floor.
Ashes to keepsakes: If you want a keepsake of your dad, you can also turn some of his ashes into a wide variety of memorabilia, such as: diamonds (see LifeGem.com or DNA2Diamonds.com); jewelry or other handcrafted glass items (ArtFromAshes.com and Memorials.com); vinyl records (Andvinyly.com); gun ammunition (MyHolySmoke.com); or an hourglass urn (InTheLightUrns.com).
Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.

Edmond home to first schoolhouse

by Bobby Anderson
Staff Writer

Nestled between a Jiffy Lube and a strip mall, one of the most historic buildings in the state sits quietly along a bustling Second Street in Edmond.
Walking inside the 1889 Territorial Schoolhouse is like taking a step back in time. Thanks to care and painstaking renovation, the earliest one-room schoolhouse in Oklahoma feels like a piece of undisturbed history.
For people like Beverly Terry, it’s a labor of love.
Terry is an Edmond High grad and prior officer for the Edmond Historic Preservation Trust. She enjoys seeing the looks today’s school children have when they walk inside for a tour.
“It shows how hard it was for kids those days,” said Terry, tugging on the school bell which chimed twice daily. “A lot of kids in this area rode goats to school.”
HISTORY BEHIND THE HISTORY
On a summer day in 1889, Jennie Forster marched into Brown’s Lumber Company and ordered enough lumber on credit to build a schoolhouse for the new village of Edmond, Oklahoma Territory. The Ladies School Aid Society, consisting of 15 women, had been formed and the ladies were determined to have a proper school for the local children.
Jennie (Mrs. George) Forster was the president of the society. Among the other members were Mrs. L.G. Wahl, Mrs. C.A. Dake, Mrs. Frank Kiedrowski, Mrs. E.W. Erisman, Mrs. H.H. Moose, Mrs. Peter Wilderson, Mrs. J.J. Shen, Mrs. Alvin Ricketts, Mrs. John Pfaff, Mrs. Henry Morrison and Mrs. F.S. Peck.
The women set to work immediately to earn the money to pay back the lumber bill. They badgered their husbands, as well as the other town merchants and citizens. Mrs. Forster joked in later years she was sure the businessmen “felt like running out the back door when they saw me entering the front door.”
The 1889 Territorial Schoolhouse on 124 E. Second Street is possibly the last remaining original 1889 structure in Edmond. The Historic Schoolhouse was restored as an Oklahoma Centennial Project by the Edmond Historic Preservation Trust.
The State of Oklahoma granted the renovation project $75,000.
The Schoolhouse re-opened to the public on April 15, 2007. The first class of students to visit the historic site on the first Schoolhouse Field Trip was in the fall of 2008.
Many people drove past this historic site when it was the boarded up Sanders Camera Shop, not realizing they were seeing and passing by a historic building.
This special restoration project was carried out due to the efforts of the local Trust, local historian Lucille Warrick and a group of concerned citizens. Major restoration uncovered the original blackboards buried underneath the interior walls.
A sample was sent off to a lab in New York and the results showed the blackboard material was a combination of burnt sweet potato and milk.
HISTORY ALIVE
During a five-week summer period, students are able to come for authentic school activities designed to teach them what it was really like to go to school more than a century ago
The building was a schoolhouse for just 10 years. Even an extra room in back couldn’t keep up with the tremendous growth the territory was experiencing.
The building was sold and passed through four different families. The Sanders family was the last owner, using it for both a residence and business.
Codes of conduct for teachers – who earned a monthly sum of $32 – are framed on the wall.
Here’s a few:
· You will not marry during the term of your contract.
· You are not to keep company with men.
· You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.
· You may under no circumstances die your hair.
· You must wear at least two petticoats.
· You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother.
Preservation Trust members like Terry are walking history books, not only about the schoolhouse but the town in general.
“People don’t realize there were no trees at all in Edmond,” Terry said. “One of the guys bought 2,000 trees and let everyone have trees to put around their property.”
The Schoolhouse is open to the public the first two Saturdays of each month from 1-4 p.m. and by appointment at 405-715-1889.

Every month, RSVP of Central Oklahoma volunteers put together Project Red, White & Blue gift bags to be given to older veterans throughout Oklahoma and Cleveland Counties.
A single line from the insert included in the bag says it all. “Freedom isn’t free…Thank you Veterans!” From toothbrushes to socks, snacks to tissues, Project Red, White & Blue allows older adult RSVP volunteers in the community to express their thanks to veterans for serving and protecting.
RSVP of Central Oklahoma, Inc. is part of the Corporation for National and Community Service and a United Way partner agency. Thanks to the Kirkaptrick Family Fund, RSVP volunteers are able to assemble these bags and have them delivered to deserving older veterans throughout our community.
Kim Sanders is an RSVP volunteer who delivers the bags and is able to see firsthand the impact Project Red, White and Blue has.
“When I deliver the bags, they’re so excited to get them. There are useful items in the bag that people have thoughtfully prepared and they really appreciate them,” Sanders said.
The gesture may seem simple, but for a veteran to know that someone took the time to create a bag full of useful goods and to deliver it to them can mean the world.
“It is so nice to be thought of and appreciated. I live alone and on a fixed income. This bag has so many items that I don’t have to go out and purchase. RSVP has always been so wonderful to me. I truly appreciate this thoughtful gift,” World War II veteran Don Weaver said.
RSVP of Central Oklahoma, Inc. enriches the lives of older adults by connecting them with meaningful and rewarding community volunteer opportunities. Since 1973, their vision has been for older adults to continue to live a life full of purpose and meaning.

What are you hoping for this year? AllianceHealth Midwest Hospital Volunteer Services

I’m hoping the country comes together this year and there’s not so much division and meanness. Mary Boutin

Another trip to Scandinavia. The last one was out of this world! Lucy Dinberg

I’m just wishing for the best for my grandkids growing up. Kay Rogers

Personally, I pray everyday for a better attitude and stronger faith. Terry Wilkinson