BOSTON — At Mountain View Nursing Home in rural Virginia, end-of-life care is treated as sacred work. The organization’s approach to caregiving has turned it into a 5-star rated facility with no federal complaints and no penalties in at least three years.
And the care its staff take in treating elderly and dying residents — and supporting their families — made it a natural fit for American Health Care Association leaders looking for a quality provider story to close out their annual convention Wednesday.
Administrator Ryan Hoover delivered an emotional keynote on how his 40-bed facility rediscovered its soul with heartfelt and individualized end-of-life care. Typical operational pressures can quietly erode a caregiver’s core purpose, Hoover explained.
“Somewhere along the way, buried in that three-inch red emergency preparedness binder, or in a cabinet behind last year’s audit, we lost our why,” he noted. “Surveys and staffing, census and psychotropics steal our focus. And we forget that the resident likes cookies.”
For Hoover, rekindling purpose isn’t a theoretical exercise; it is an everyday operational philosophy rooted in deep, relational care.
From Mayo Clinic to rural mission...