Gifford Medical Center beloved family physician Dr. Ken Borie of Randolph has been chosen as nursing home Medical Director of the Year by the Vermont Health Care Association.
Dr. Borie received the honor at an Oct. 18 ceremony at Lake Morey Resort in Fairlee. A doctor of osteopathic medicine at Gifford since 1980, Dr. Borie is the medical director at Rowan Court Health and Rehabilitation Center in Barre - a position he has held since August of 2010 with help from Kim Ladue, a Gifford nurse practitioner working directly at Rowan Court.
“I feel honored to receive this distinction, but feel this is a shared award with Kim and I,” a modest Dr. Borie said. Rowan Court Administrator James Beeler and Director of Nursing Kathy Hemmelrick nominated Dr. Borie for the award. “The biggest thing with Dr. Borie is he is so committed to the practice of gerontology. He really is cut from a different cloth so to speak from most primary care practices,” says Beeler, who has worked in nursing home administration for two decades in five facilities in four states.
In Beeler’s experience, many providers find themselves too busy to commit to significant time at a nursing home. A popular local physician, that is true of Dr. Borie as well. “I’m a very busy office practitioner,” he says, noting he sees people from birth to the end-of-life, often caring for multiple generations of one family.
He had been seeing patients at Rowan Court for seven years, but it wasn’t until Ladue stepped up to help that Dr. Borie agreed to the medical director role.
He’s an advocate for other nursing homes adopting the model. He now spends one to two days a week - Wednesday and some Saturdays at Rowan Court. It’s work he enjoys. “It’s the continuum of life,” he says. But work he couldn’t do alone.
Together Ladue and Dr. Borie care for 65 of Rowan Court’s 95 residents and patients.
Rowan Court also has the highest medical acuity of any nursing home in Vermont, Beeler says, meaning the facility needs the level of medical expertise Ladue and Dr. Borie provide.
The duo additionally brings medical students from Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H., to Rowan Court to train - promoting nursing home care as part of a medical practice.
In their nomination of Dr. Borie, Beeler and Hemmelrick also praise their medical director for raising clinical standards and his commitment to patient care. “Dr. Borie couples his expertise and experience with a caring and compassion that is treasured by his patients and residents. … (He) is extremely highly regarded by the staff at Rowan Court, and the staff feels they are very fortunate to have a medical director of his caliber.”