StoneBridge Memory Care celebrates over a decade of excellence in Jacksonville
By Ben Cox
StoneBridge Memory Care in Jacksonville is a community within the Jacksonville community. The 28-private room facility is nestled in the middle of the 700 block of West Walnut Street. It has quietly provided excellence in memory care for more than a decade.
Erich Marks, executive director and house manager, has been with the facility since its inception under the previous ownership of Lavender Ridge. Lavender Ridge in Jacksonville was part of a $6.7 million purchase by StoneBridge Senior Living in May 2022. Marks previously was an administrator in a large healthcare setting in the Springfield area. He says family and a flyer brought him to Jacksonville, “I ended up here because my wife was pregnant with our first child and she is from here. Her dad (they are real close) said, ‘Hey, if you move to Jacksonville, you’ll never pay a nickel for childcare.’ They were retired and we thought that would do. So we moved here, and it was actually him that back before the facility opened in 2014 — I was still working in Springfield commuting as a social worker and doing administration and quality assurance for Platinum Healthcare and he brought me a newspaper clipping that this place was opening. I actually caught the owner the last day they were in town. He actually stayed an extra day to interview me, and that’s how I ended up here.”
Marks says from day one, the facility has been one giant family — from the way that it approaches care to the way the staff help one another. Marks, whose office door is next to the locked entrance, says he’s very rarely inside his office during the day because he’s actively on the floor assisting in all of the day-to-day operations and simply spending time with the people for whom he and his staff provide care. Neither Lavender Ridge nor StoneBridge has ever received a complaint investigation in the 11 years the facility has been open. He says that it all comes down to open lines of communication at every level, whether it’s directly to the patient and their family or with doctors and staff. “I went from managing these bigger buildings where it’s kind of difficult on the bigger scale and when you are in bigger places to have as much effect on the outcome,” Marks says. StoneBridge is not designed to operate that way.
The building is purposefully bisected into two operating parts in order to create a different environment based upon a patient’s need. Marks says that loud and high stimulus environments have a poor effect on those dealing with Demyelinating diseases. “It creates anxiety, fear and a lot of people who have dementia illnesses are already [in that state of mind]. If you could imagine how fearful it would be to not know exactly what’s going on or who is around you or why, and then if you were in a big place that was loud and confusing. If you have ever been to a big airport for the first time, it’s kind of what it reminds me of, and you can go there as an adult with all of your facilities, and it is disorienting. That’s why this facility is small,” Marks says.
The divided portions of the facility also help to provide a high staff-to-patient ratio of 1 to 7, which allows the staff to keep close tabs on all 28 residents. Marks says one of the pleasures is that he gets to know everybody that comes through the door and lives there, “For a family member to have my cell phone number is not unusual.”
Marks says that the home feel also goes back to current ownership. StoneBridge Senior Living is a family-owned company started more than 50 years ago by Gloria Lierman, who was a nurse. Marks says the St. Louis-based long-term facility group is now under management by Gloria Lierman’s son: “A sale in healthcare is usually indicative of a bad situation. It usually means financially not successful or in trouble with the health department. That was absolutely not the case here. It was because Mike Dietrich [of Lavender Ridge] couldn’t do it anymore. He had a new life that far away [in Florida] and he decided to go ahead and sell. He sold to StoneBridge in St. Charles, Missouri, and if you start looking into the history of that company, it was originally [owned by] Mark Lierman’s mom. She was an R.N. and got her administrator’s license to run a facility, I think it was called Marilyn Heights in Missouri. Eventually, she bought it and bought a few others around Missouri. When she got to where she was going to retire, she sold it to her two sons and her two daughters.” Marks notes that it’s becoming more rare to see family-owned and operated facilities staying in business with long-term care because of the tough business climate in healthcare. Marks says having that connection has also made ownership readily available both over the phone and in person, which he says is another major difference from larger groups and facilities.
Marks says that the COVID-19 pandemic did mark a change in long-term care, highlighting the stress and the need at all levels. He says the facility was lucky throughout the pandemic that they never had to hire a nursing agency to cover due to an outbreak at the height of the pandemic. Marks attributes that milestone to the perseverance, work ethic and dedication of the small staff at StoneBridge. He says that anytime there was an issue, the other nurses or staff would help with scheduling shortfalls due to illness all in the hopes of keeping the virus out of the facility and making sure other staff stayed well. The 24 staff members, Marks says, all look out for one another and treat each other like family just as they do their patients: “The way that we function here is that we care about people and then, we care for them.”
For more information about StoneBridge Memory Care, visit their office at 750 West Walnut St. in Jacksonville or visit their website, stonebridgeseniorliving.com.
