“My team and I have been privileged to receive a lot of awards during the past year,” said Flanagan, who has six employees flying to Massachusetts this year to receive awards from Hospitality Homes’ corporate owner, Berkshire Healthcare.
“One thing I’ve learned is not to take credit for anything. It’s all about my staff and the good things they do. We’re a team, and we’re totally focused on the residents who live here.”
Flanagan was born in Bellbrook and graduated from Bellbrook High School in 1988. He met his wife, Dr. Theresa Blachly Flanagan, at Wright State University. His wife accepted a residency at North Carolina State University, but before moving Flanagan gained invaluable experience as a nurse aid and dialysis technician. He graduated from North Carolina State University in 1997 and began an internship program in nursing home administration through Chapel Hill University.
“I learned how nursing homes were run, because I worked in them,” said Flanagan, whose parents, John and Connie Anspach still live in Bellbrook.
“The internship program had me working side-by-side with nurses for 12 weeks, cooking food and washing dishes in the kitchen for six weeks, and wearing a housekeeping uniform and cleaning my own floor.”
Flanagan completed the program and was hired as the administrator of a 100-bed nursing home in Sanford, N.C. After two years, he and his wife decided to move back to Bellbrook.
To gain more training, Flanagan chose to work as an assistant administrator under a seasoned administrator at a large, respected Dayton nursing home for one year.
In October 2001, he was named administrator of Hospitality Homes near Greene Memorial Hospital.
He was later named regional director of operations for the Ohio/Pennsylvania division of Berkshire Healthcare, which requires him to function on the corporate level while still overseeing the 100-bed Xenia operation that specializes in short-term rehabilitation and long-term care.
With Flanagan in charge, Hospitality Homes was elevated to a five-star Medicare facility from a one-star. Resident satisfaction is rated at an all-time high of 95 percent, and employee satisfaction is 93 percent.
“We are resident-focused,” said Flanagan, whose facility was named the 2009/2010 Best Nursing Home in Greene County by a local newspaper and received a 2009 Eclipse Award from the Better Business Bureau of Dayton and Miami Valley.
“I met with my staff, and we decided we needed to make a cultural change. We started a campaign to have happy residents, and I make myself very accessible to my staff and the residents. My human resources director, Nichole Schroeder, makes sure that employees and staff are nominated for awards and receive recognition for doing a great job,” he said.
Flanagan said he gained a deeper understanding of what residents’ families experience when his own grandfather was a resident.
Flanagan and his wife have three children: Lucas, 9, Connor, 6, and Sawyer, 2.
In his spare time Flanagan volunteers as a wresting coach with the Wee Eagle program.
Contact this columnist at (937) 432-9054 or jjbaer@aol.com.
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