ON Health System breaks ground on first assisted living facility

Photo Credit: Echo Reed/Osage News

Written By: Collyn Combs

(OSAGE RESERVATION) The Osage Nation Health System hosted a groundbreaking to commemorate a new assisted living facility to be built within the Hominy Senior Housing Complex. The project marks the Nation’s first step into assisted living.

Read this story on Osage News here.

The Aug. 20 event began with an opening address by ON Health System CEO Mark Rogers, an Osage prayer by Secretary of Language/ Culture/ Education Vann Bighorse and remarks from Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear. Representatives from the Osage Nation Congress and the Health System also attended the landmark event.

“If you would’ve told me some years ago that they’d be moving so fast, so organized, so ready to take on the risk that they understand,” Standing Bear said. “A building is a building that you’ve got to have people to manage it, people to understand the money requirements that go, how income comes in, how it goes out, how you build, how you take care of the people, what medicines and all these issues that health professionals deal with every day.”

Si-Si A-Pe-Txa Board Chairwoman, Cindra Shangreau, said that the assisted living facility will be more than a home for Osage elders.

“Our elders are the keepers of our songs, our stories, our language, our way of life, our culture,” she said. “They carried us through hardship. They taught us resilience. They showed us the meaning of honor and tradition. This facility is a promise to them and to us. A promise that they will be cared for, celebrated and held in the dignity that they deserve.”

The facility will cost approximately $8 million to construct using ARPA funds the Nation received during the COVID-19 pandemic. Builders Unlimited will construct the facility and it will take about a year to complete.

It will start as an 8,995-square-foot, 8-bed facility with room to add on as needed. The facility will offer many amenities for elders.

“We will have congregate dining, there’ll be activities, there’ll be field trips, shopping trips, cultural and tribal ceremonies, and activities that they will be taken to as well as some crafts … anything from drum making, quilting,” Rogers said. “There’s just a whole expansive list of activities in our Pathways Program, which is a grant we have now for providing services for tribal elders. Our seniors help fund a lot of these activities, so we’ll have a full-time activities coordinator.”

“We are wanting to add an indoor pool,” Rogers added. “We weren’t able to do it in this first one. So as we open and continue to expand, that’s one of the things that we want to be able to do. So we do aquatic therapy and then have normal swim time. So that was one of the things that was really important.”

Not only will there be activities and around-the-clock assistance if needed, but one of the main priorities is to make the facility affordable for elders.

“Just like we do with the health system, nothing we do in Indian Country is cheap or easy or free,” Rogers said. “We will have some kind of insurance card, whatever that is, with whatever existing coverage they have; and then whatever the state provides or a marketplace insurance plan and then whatever the tribe’s able to apportion to take care of those who may not have any way of paying for anything. They have to meet criteria, they have to be semi-independent and they have to have some amount of coverage. It’ll be affordable.”

The current funding only covers the construction of the facility; Congress will have to appropriate money to hire staff and run the facility, he said.

“Congress is going to have to provide for our operations,” Rogers said. “There’s not any money to buy Band-Aids and computer paper, all that kind of stuff. All that operational stuff and staffing will have to be funded, and Congress is aware of that. We’re waiting until closer to when we actually begin to open before they start putting up money for that.”

Former Congresswoman Angela Pratt also attended the groundbreaking. She proposed and sponsored bill ONCA 21-78 in 2021, appropriating American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for the assisted living facility after an elder she knows fell while at home alone.

“I was the Speaker of Congress at the time, and we have an aunt that lived down here in the village,” Pratt said. “She was having a hard time and she had fallen; she laid there for 24 hours because she couldn’t get up and help herself. She was using the restroom, so she had laid on the bathroom floor because she didn’t see her children every day. She told me about that and I just got really emotional thinking about all that she’s done and who she is as a ZonZoLi woman. And I just felt that real sadness.”

Pratt realized an assisted living facility could serve as an alternative to nursing homes, but still provide elders with independence and comfort. She next turned to the Nation’s Strategic Plan, which included an assisted living facility as one of the top priorities.

“In that strategic plan, assisted living was first,” she said. “I wasn’t doing it for my own selfish reasons for my family; it was out of love, and that’s why I decided to do it. But I knew there was a need for both. I went by the strategic plan. So the people spoke on that and said, ‘assisted living.’”