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Profile: Reinvigorating a community through wellness
Seabury is a life care community established in 1992 with 400 residents living on a 66-acre campus. Five years ago, Seabury introduced the Circle of Wellness program, which was a paradigm shift in Seabury’s core services and values. Today, the program incorporates fitness, nutrition and spirituality along with traditional healthcare as part of its philosophy.
“In the field of aging, you always try to track where the market is going. What are the clients 5–10 years down the road going to want—what will attract them to your community? The generation coming to us in the next decade sees health and fitness as part of their lifestyle. We emphasize wellness to stay competitive.
“Wellness is an expected feature in retirement communities. Think about colleges. Twenty-five years ago, very few had a fitness facility. Today, you couldn’t get a student to attend a college that doesn’t have a huge fitness center. With the Baby Boomers coming up, the same thing is happening in retirement communities.
“At times it was tough to convince current residents of the idea that future residents are looking for wellness and we needed to expand our offerings to stay competitive. However, once we were up and running, it took less time than anticipated to shift the residents and staff to a full-blown ‘Wellness for Life’ Philosophy.
“We are attracting a younger and more active clientele. Our entrance age has dropped by 3-1/2 years, and we are attracting active 76–78 year-olds because they want this amenity. The people who are coming are more active, more educated, have higher incomes, and have more self-initiative and control in their lives. They relate well with other residents.
“We now have 85% of our independent living residents using the fitness center and it gets its allocation of funding because of that level of utilization. The fitness center also is beneficial for marketing. People in the community and on the wait list can use the facility. That makes the wait list more solid and committed to Seabury.
“We also opened the fitness center to employees who follow guidelines in respect to the residents’ priority. Employees have better morale, too, and we’ve improved retention and reduced absences. Our residents love to see employees in the fitness center.
“Wellness is an integral part of our mission. From a business standpoint, the fitness and wellness program has decreased attrition and therefore, reduced our future healthcare liability. Wellness is where the market is going—it is the future for all aging services providers if they want to remain marketable.”
John S. Mobley
Executive Vice President & Chief Executive Officer, Seabury
Bloomfield, Connecticut
Continued...CRSA profile: Wellness for function and quality of life
