The business, owned by Teresa Whittington and Godwin Dixon, has seen increased demand for memory care services, necessitating the expansion of the facility.
“There's a lot of factors that are driving dementia rates higher, and so we've seen much, much greater demand,” Dixon said.
The details
Teresa’s House is a nurse-owned and operated senior living facility offering assisted living, memory care and enhanced care. The business’s offerings span the continuum of care, Dixon said, noting that the business has 37 investors including doctors, nurses and social workers.
Residents live in houses, rather than a residential facility, which is a choice Dixon and Whittington made to improve the resident experience.
“If I move you into a facility, that's not going to look anything like what you're used to,” Dixon said. “You're wanting to find home, and so that's why we've created houses because that's what everybody remembers. Nobody was raised in facilities.”
The business began with a $10 million campus featuring 40 rooms in three houses, with each building housing 12-16 residents. The limited number of residents allows for community-building and small-group activities, Dixon said.
“With 12 to 16 residents in a house, I actually know everybody and we know their individual nuances,” he said.
The expansion, which began in 2023 and opened in November, saw the addition of three houses with a total of 48 rooms. The senior living facility now has 88 rooms and a total value of $25 million, Dixon said. To support the expansion, the business added 40 employees, bringing its total staff to 90 people.
The new addition also includes an activity center with a retro-style kitchen, and a man cave with a 1965 Ford Mustang and a work bench with tools. The decor and focal points in the rooms are interactive for residents, and are intended to bring back memories, Dixon said, as familiar items are also comforting to residents with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
“You can't cure Alzheimer's, you can't cure dementia, but what we can do is set a person up [in] an environment that brings back those memories,” he said.
The activity center and three new houses are enclosed in a fence, and have no internal roads, allowing residents to roam freely, and enjoy walking paths and fountains.
Diving in deeper
Whittington, who serves on the national board for the Society for the Advancement of Gerontological Environments, said she is able to implement best practices at Teresa’s House after learning about them through her work with the organization.
“She obviously has put all that experience into this center and that's part of the reason you see a best practice of everything in here,” Dixon said.
Homes at Teresa’s House have intentionally selected elements that are intended to improve wellbeing for residents, including incorporating of calming colors, providing ample natural lighting and limiting noise. Each house is also an air-safe building, with the ability for each room to go into negative pressure isolation, limiting the spread of illnesses. Teresa’s House saw no deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic as a result, Dixon said.
Rooms are outfitted with various features to support seniors with dementia, including custom-designed wardrobes that streamline the dressing process by offering less options.
“Some days you open your closet, you’ve got 30 outfits in there, and you're like, ‘What am I going to do?,’” Dixon said. “Well, if your brain is dying, making choices is hard, so here you have limited choice. You have just a couple of outfits to choose from so it's not overwhelming.”
The business has also added a dedicated staff member to continue training on best practices for dementia care. Whittington said they are also pursuing the Positive Approach to Care certification from Teepa Snow.
“What we're trying to do [is] raise the education of our staff so that they're able to have more skills on how to handle different situations and to understand what's happening with that resident,” Whittington said. “Everybody needs something different, so we're trying to give them a lot of education on that.”
Quote of note
Dixon said the facility is “state-of-the-art,” which has contributed to the business winning the Best of McKinney award for senior care from the McKinney Chamber of Commerce for five consecutive years since 2020.
“This is next level stuff, and nobody has built anything like this, but everybody should, because that's the one thing we can do, is create a comfortable environment for folks,” he said.
Looking ahead
Residents at the business’s existing memory care home will move to the new memory care village, allowing the former home to be used for additional assisted living capacity, Dixon said.
While about 10 residents will take occupancy in the new homes by the end of the year, all 48 rooms in the 3-home expansion are expected to be filled by mid-2025.
Teresa’s House has another location in Argyle, and Dixon said they are considering opening a third location but are intentionally limiting growth so that the owners can remain hands-on.
“We don't want to be the biggest, we just want to be the best,” Dixon said.
- Expanded November 2024
- 6521 Collin McKinney Parkway, McKinney
- www.teresashouse.com
