The license at Mt. Baker Care Center in Bellingham, WA, covers skilled nursing, respite care, assisted living, palliative care, and nursing home care. The building stands in the South Bellingham neighborhood, and at 47 beds, it’s on the small side.
Skilled nursing means licensed nurses working on the premises. Rehabilitation Services and Short-Term Rehab are also on the service list, so a resident’s therapy can happen in the building instead of at another facility.
Every room here is private. Assisted living provides help in that room for specific tasks, such as bathing, getting dressed, or managing medication. Palliative care is a different sort of help, aimed at comfort and at keeping symptoms under control for someone seriously ill.
Respite gets booked by whoever does the caregiving at home, for the duration when they’re traveling or getting over something of their own. With five kinds of care on one license, a resident whose needs change over time can stay put while the care changes around them.
Days can bring group excursions, gardening, sing-alongs, and a Sunday worship service, and Enrichment Activities is a named program on top of that. Nearly everything that reaches the table is cooked from scratch, much of it with locally grown produce.
Most errands mean a car or somebody driving, since 44 on Walk Score counts as car-dependent. The home takes private pay, Medicare, and Medicaid. Nursing time per resident runs to 4 hours and 22 minutes a day, and Catherine Reis-El Bara is the administrator in charge.
