Facility for vision-impaired residents

The new community can accommodate 38 residents in private and semiprivate rooms, along with community space featuring public and private areas designed to support those with vision impairments. Designed by Perkins Eastman, the facility offers several vision-specific features:

Rooms and hallways have indirect lighting to prevent glare, as well as increased lighting to support vision. Lighting is enhanced in each room with overbed lighting and other additional lighting. Contrasting colors are used to differentiate door frames, hand rails, and corner guards from the walls, and toilet seats from commodes. High-contrast signage, as well as signage in Braille, is common throughout. A living room/lounge space (shown here) offers a homelike setting for residents and families, with bookshelves, seating areas, a fish tank, and a flat-screen TV. Also in this area, an “InTouch” program provides broadcasts of individuals reading various publications, such as the

New York Times and the

Wall Street Journal.

The Guild Institute is located on Jewish Home Lifecare’s five-acre campus in the Bronx, New York. The campus consists of an 816-bed nursing home and rehabilitation center offering long-term, subacute, and dementia care; on-site dialysis along with a full spectrum of services including full time medical staff, psychiatry, and psychological services; skilled nursing; rehabilitation therapies; social work services; therapeutic recreation; pastoral care; palliative care; hospice; speech therapy; and a swallowing center.

Future plans include the expansion of The Guild Institute for Vision & Aging to three units. Additionally

Jewish Home Lifecare and

The Jewish Guild for the Blind will launch a new research organization dedicated to improving the quality of care on a national level for all healthcare facility residents with vision loss.