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CUE 2006

David Green

David Green Honored for Leadership in Aging Services

After serving as the CEO of a leading retirement facility in Oshkosh, WI, for 29 years, David Green (ArchEngr/Bus '62) retired in 2005 and was presented the Award of Honor from the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging for his leadership in improving services to seniors. 

It was a crowning achievement to a career focused on helping to improve the living environments for seniors in long-term care facilities. A few years after graduating from CU-Boulder, Green became part of the charter class of students at the University of North Texas' graduate program in long-term care administration in 1968. The program was funded along with Medicare and Medicaid as part of President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" legislation.

After earning his master's degree in studies in aging, Green crisscrossed the country several times for various internship and job opportunities before becoming head of the 300-resident Evergreen Retirement Community in 1976. Green successfully led the company into uncharted territory with an initiative to develop a new design for nursing homes based on small households of 8 to 11 residents.

When the Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987 was passed by Congress with the requirement that nursing homes be more resident-centered, Green was already planning a new facility that would focus on the needs of residents. "Applying the institutional medical model of hospitals to nursing homes was fundamentally flawed," he says of the traditional approach to nursing home design. "Long-term care is not just about curing, it's about living."

Evergreen undertook a series of pilot and demonstration projects under Green's leadership, culminating in a third-generation nursing home for which he returned to his engineering roots to serve as project manager.

Green also introduced the customer-centered concepts of Continuous Quality Improvement in the long-term care field, while working collaboratively with the state of Wisconsin to interpret nursing home regulations in a way that supports resident-centered environments.