Ribbon-cutting ceremony highlights memory care options
A ribbon cutting was held on Thursday evening to celebrate the grand reopening of Embassy of Wyoming Valley, a nursing home which has incorporated music therapy into its memory care program.
Sam Zavada | Times Leader
WILKES-BARRE — Embassy of Wyoming Valley held a grand reopening on Thursday evening, giving the public an opportunity to meet the leadership team and take a tour of the facility.
The nursing home offers numerous forms of health care, but the memory care options were the key topic of discussion on Thursday. The third floor of Embassy of Wyoming Valley is dedicated to all stages of dementia and memory care. The leadership team on hand included Kelly Dee, corporate director of memory care, and John Swartz, local memory care director. Other corporate and local figures in the Embassy system were also in attendance.
“[This facility has] had some variation of residents with Alzheimer’s, dementia, memory care, cognitive disorder, but not really the robust, organized program that they have today,” explained Corby Johnson, vice president of program development. “This whole program is based around music therapy, so they’re whole day is structured with different types of music therapy, specific dining strategies to help stimulate with appetite and consumption, to help reduce weight loss, and different types of things like that.”
Johnson said that the rate of Alzheimer’s and memory-based diagnoses is rising, but quality care can still be hard to come by. She added that music therapy, which Dee specializes in, can stimulate parts of the brain that are mostly unimpeded by late-stage memory loss, and can relieve the agitation that can often accompany memory loss.
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