Business View Oceania | December 2019

59 60 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA DECEMBER 2019 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA DECEMBER 2019 NATIONWIDE DELIVERY www.arrowhygiene.co.nz | sales@arrowhygiene.co.nz | 0800 429 864 YOUR COMPLETE SUPPLIER FOR EVERYTHING CLEANING SUPPLYING H E A LT H C A R E FA C I L I T I E S W I T H : CLEANING CHEMICALS HANDCARE LAUNDRY CHEMICALS KITCHEN CHEMICALS MACHINERY PAPER PRODUCTS DISPOSABLE PPE TROLLEYS & CARTS ROPATA LODGE CARE COMMUNI TY Facility Manager, Angela Dodd, reflects, “I was hired in 2014 to manage Ropata before it became a Rest Home. It was running as a retirement village with 34 units and only 12 residents and struggling to keep it doors open. The new owner David Hitchins bought Ropata Village in 2014 and changed the name to Ropata Lodge. He has been buying back the individual units and we have been renting these out under private contracts. In 2015 we achieved a 3-year audit and gained a contract with the DHB, which allowed us to provide rest home level care. That was the start of exciting times ahead. With this change the whole model of what Ropata was originally built for saw Ropata Lodge full of life again, with many rest home level care residents taking up residency.” The Lodge has gone through small changes with the adding of an extra unit, for a total of 35. The facility is now full, with a small waiting list. New carpet was installed throughout the ground floor with future plans to carpet the first and top floor in due course. David Hitchins also owns the 20- unit Ropata Village down the road from the Lodge. They are independently owned villas but the plan is to make them rentals. “We’re actually quite a generator,” says Dodds, “because we’re smack in the middle of Lower Hutt. We have the hospital just down the road, the bus stops right outside and there’s a mall too, if the resident is capable. We get a lot of people that ring up from the hospital. If there’s a room available we can bring in people for respite, just needing that bit of time after an operation. But only if they’re rest home level care and mobile. We’ve also had two residents that have come straight from hospital. They’d had a fall at home and been in hospital for awhile and been rehabbed but couldn’t go back home. So we’ve actually taken them in. We have a good relationship with the hospital and also with the palliative care team at the hospice, which is really nice. If we’re able to, we take care of our residents at their end of life alongside the hospice, so they can stay here in their own home. The rooms are