Caring for Seniors

With 12 locations and more than 1,100 employees, the family-owned group of Embassy Healthcare facilities provides highly rated, specialized care for seniors—and sometimes it’s as simple as listening.

By: Ken McEntee
Date: 01/06/2010 The main focus of most parents is their children. So when Aaron and Darla Handler sit down to dinner, the discussion inevitably begins and ends with Embassy Healthcare.

“We think of our facilities as our children and we very much treat them that way,” Aaron says of the couple’s group of skilled nursing and assisted living communities. “Our enjoyment is talking about what we do, and how we can do it better.”

The couple’s passion for senior care brought them together, and drives them to make their facilities the absolute best they can be.

Like proud parents, Aaron and Darla boast about the deficiency-free surveys their Solon Pointe and Broadway Care facilities recently received from the Ohio Department of Health. That’s the equivalent of getting all A’s on a report card filled with honors classes.

“That puts us in a very unique category of long-term care in Ohio,” Aaron emphasizes. “That’s a testament to the quality of care and service in those facilities and throughout our organization.”

It’s also a testament to the “do what it takes” philosophy that pervades the Embassy operations. That philosophy means the company’s chief operating officer may find herself in sweats, cleaning a bathroom floor, shares Darla, a licensed administrator and a registered nurse.

“We do what needs to be done,” she says. “While I was cleaning the floor, the resident in the room was thrilled to have somebody to talk to. She had no idea that I was the owner of the company. It reinforced why we got into this business.”

Embassy started in 1998 with a single facility and, with the latest addition of the couple’s Madison facility in November, the family now includes more than 1,100 employees in 12 locations. Like children, each one is different, some specializing in rehabilitation, others in memory care, and others in assisted living.

A licensed administrator with a master’s degree in health care, Aaron worked at other nursing facilities for more than 10 years before starting Embassy.

“For the business to grow I knew I needed to hire outstanding people and I connected with Darla,” Aaron recalls. “I hired her. Then I married her.”

“We shared a passion for what we do,” Darla explains. “We’re the first ones there in the morning and the last to leave at night.”

As the business grows, Darla and Aaron are focused on maintaining the same hands-on philosophy that nurtured it from the start. Maintaining a regular presence at each of their facilities, Aaron says they put more mileage on their cars in a year than most couples drive in five.

“We don’t think of ourselves as a corporation,” he insists. “I understand for legal purposes that somebody has to have a title to sign papers, but when it gets down to it, our staff knows that we consider them to be far more important than we are. To the residents, the important people are the staff that provides their care and services throughout the day. We’re all very focused on the importance of the work we do. We’re not a machine shop. We don’t produce widgets. We’re entrusted with caring for human beings, and we are always aware of that responsibility.”

While the ownership at Embassy’s various facilities comes in a variety of configurations, Aaron and Darla stress that they are personally in charge of overseeing all operations.

Depending on the facility, 20- to 30-percent of the residents in Embassy communities are short-term rehabilitation patients.

“We highly emphasize individualized resident therapy programs and are very proud of the rehab work we do,” Darla says.

Grande Oaks, in Oakwood Village,  has added specialty in respiratory care and has a ventilator unit. Next door to Grande Oaks is Grande Pavilion, which offers a dementia and memory care unit. The Solon campus features assisted living at the Woods at Solon Pointe, and skilled nursing care at Solon Pointe at Emerald Ridge.
The Broadway Care Center, in Maple Heights, specializes in rehab and respite care.
Madison Health Care, in Madison, the newest member of the Embassy family, features a behavioral unit. Seasons, in Stow, is a small, 50-bed building in a country setting that focus on special needs patients, with a special program for patients with multiple sclerosis.
All of Embassy Healthcare’s facilities provide the best of physical, occupational, and speech therapy services.

You can find out about all of Embassy’s facilities by calling 440-439-7976, or visiting www.embassyhealthcare.net.

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