When Leroy Smith received an update and photos of his 69-year-old father in Raleigh, N.C., he was shocked and saddened. The Hartford Hospital Supply System coordinator could see how his father’s living situation was inadequate and his health was deteriorating.

Smith moved his father from North Carolina to his Connecticut home, but it soon became evident that he needed more assistance. He had seen information at the hospital about Hartford HealthCare Center for Healthy Aging and stopped by Bliss Suite 104 to see if they could help find solutions to a maze of problems.

He learned that the Hartford HealthCare Center for Healthy Aging is a resource and assessment center designed to enhance access to services and information related to attaining optimal quality of life for seniors and their caregivers.

Resource Coordinator Penny Ross, MPH, worked with Smith to determine what support was necessary. After her assessment, she connected the father with a Hartford HealthCare primary care physician and assisted with switching health insurance policies, supplemented by enrollment in the Medicare Savings Plan.

Ross suggested assisted living could be the optimum level of care and facilitated an application to an appropriate community. While waiting for approval of an assisted living facility, Smith’s father received private pay care from Hartford HealthCare Independence at Home, ensuring that he was safe and well-cared for while his son was at work. Six weeks after the initial assessment, he moved into his new senior living apartment and was being followed up by a geriatric primary care physician.

Every step of the way Ross was able to develop a support network within Hartford HealthCare.

After the older man had settled into his new home, Smith stopped by the Center for Healthy Aging to ask about fitness programs to augment physical therapy. Ross was thrilled to hear that the father no longer relied on a wheelchair but had improved so much that he only needed a walker for ambulation.

The resource coordinator suggested the GoodLife Fitness program at Cedar Mountain Commons, an independent and assisted living community also within the Hartford HealthCare continuum of care. She was also able to assist the family in identifying and applying for skilled nursing facilities if in the future a higher level of care was needed.

“It’s been rewarding to work with Mr. Smith and, through hard work and persistence, witness the successful transition of his father from North Carolina to Connecticut,” Ross said.

“The Center for Healthy Aging has been very helpful and supportive of helping me find the appropriate care for my father,” Smith said.