Kendal's Borden Center Serves the Wider Community

A surprising number of people don’t know
that the Benjamin Borden Center, our skilled
nursing facility, admits many more Rockbridge
area residents than it does Kendal contract
residents. There are sixty beds, usually filled.
Kendalites typically occupy fewer than ten of
these, for longer or shorter stays, as the case
might be.

Rockbridge area patients pay via private pay,
Medicare, or Medicaid. Approximately forty per
cent of Borden residents are on Medicaid. We
are the only not-for-profit skilled nursing facility
in the area, and our acceptance of Medicaid
patients is appreciated by many local families.
Our community involvement is a natural one
because the Borden Center is the direct descendant
of an earlier area facility.

When, in 2001, Stonewall Jackson Hospital (now Carilion
Stonewall Jackson Hospital) decided to discontinue
its extended care unit, Kendal’s Board
of Directors voted unanimously to endorse a
proposal to build a nursing home on the Kendal
campus. (Kendal had opened in July of 2000
with provision on site only for Independent
Living and Assisted Living residents.) A great
deal of planning had to be done, with the
cooperation of the Rockbridge County Planning
Commission, the Commonwealth of Virginia,
and numerous other authoritative and regulatory
bodies.

These hurdles were leapt, ground was
broken in August of 2001, and the Borden
Center opened its doors in late September of
2002. The October, 2002 issue of this newsletter
reports the arrival of forty four patients
from the Stonewall Jackson facility, transported                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              “by ambulance, van, and private car.” Kendal
resident volunteers met the newcomers and
helped them settle into their quarters. The
whole operation, says the newsletter, “moving
with near-military precision, was completed by
noon, after which residents, volunteers, and
nursing staff enjoyed a bounteous luncheon
together.”

During the fourteen years since its opening,
the Borden Center has continued its close reationship
with the Rockbridge area. Rockbridge
residents are admitted as patients, some
for short stays, some for the remainder of their
lives. Rockbridge families come to visit, come
to play music and sing in the sun room, come
with their dogs to provide pet therapy.

Time runs on, though, and the Borden Center
is showing its age. Renovation is needed
and is part of Kendal’s current Master Plan.
Apart from wear and tear, the planners have
taken into account a number of changes in
Borden’s clientele. We now have a larger
number of dementia patients, for example, and
in this we are not alone. Dementia care is a
national and in fact world-wide concern of the
twenty-first century.

Since research has shown that dementia
patients are happiest in a setting that reminds
them of their homes — small-scale living rooms
they can relax in, kitchens they can walk into,
easy access to the outdoors — the Master Plan
calls for a reconfiguration of Borden’s current
floor plan. Special attention will be given to
providing plenty of natural light, which has been
scientifically proven to combat depression.
(And intuition has told us just that, all along.)
Borden’s beautiful sun room, made possible by
generous benefactors and opened in the fall of
2009, serves as an indicator of things to come.

— Jo McMurtry

Originally published in the October 2016 Residents’ Newsletter