Community First Solutions is growing, serving Hamilton, Butler County, and the surrounding region with innovative and sustainable healthcare programs that enhance the lives of the communities it serves while propelling it into the future.
Community First Solutions (CFS) was founded in 1918 in a home on Dayton Street in Hamilton and was known originally as The Community Home for the Aged. It expanded through the next century, becoming Community First Solutions in 2001. Today, CFS is a not-for profit health network which provides a diverse range of care throughout the Greater Cincinnati and Dayton communities. Today, CFS offers 16 different service lines, including Meals on Wheels, transportation services, a preschool, and a special focus on behavioral health and senior living.
Brett Kirkpatrick joined CFS as President and CEO in 2018, helping to drive organizational growth, and expanding service offerings, and geographic reach in his time with the organization. The vision is clear: to identify and develop innovative and sustainable programs that enhance individual lives with the values of people, quality, integrity, compassion, and community at the forefront. Kirkpatrick says as they look to that vision, the two areas of focus they have are senior services and behavioral health.
The vision for growth can be seen directly. In 2020, CFS began to offer counseling services through Foundations Counseling. In 2021 and 2022, the campus of Berkeley Square had multiple expansion projects. In 2023, the CFS Pharmacy moved to a new location and expanded. And significantly, in 2023 and 2024, CFS expanded senior services by partnering with Kettering Health to manage the operations of Sycamore Glen Senior Living Community, and acquired two for-profit communities – Anthology of Mason (rebranded to Montage Mason), and HarborChase of Beavercreek (rebranded to The Patterson).
Kettering has a very large senior living campus on their Miamisburg Hospital campus with independent and assisted living. When Kettering asked CFS to do an analysis for them to see what was working and what was not, they ended up deciding on a long-term management agreement where Kettering still owns the property and assets, but CFS does most of the management.
The partnership was the first of its kind for CFS and is something they hope to continue to do more of. Erica Schneider, President for Kettering Health Miamisburg and President for Kettering Health Washington Township says she is thankful.
“I am very thankful for you and your team,” she said. “The partnership has exceeded our expectations.”
“What we've found through that is, our engagement with staff there is one of the higher engagements through all of Kettering,” Kirkpatrick said. “Not only are we able to ensure quality, but we're also engaging the team in that process and increasing their mission, which is growing that census population. It's been a win-win-win.”
Montage Mason, in Mason is an assisted living and memory care community that offers premium accommodations to residents. With outdoor space to enjoy staying active in, enriching activities, events, and outings, residents can thrive. The Patterson, located in Beavercreek near Dayton also offers assisted living and memory care with personalized care and vibrant amenities.
With the acquisition of these communities, CFS had the unique task of transitioning them from for profit communities to non-profits. One immediate difference was that both of these communities had previously been run by healthcare companies that were across the country and not at all tied into the community or region. From day one, CFS was able to connect with and support the employees and residents in ways that a management company located thousands of miles away simply could not.
Danielle Webb, Vice President of Marketing and Community Relations, has been with CFS for nearly 20 years. When it comes to branding, Webb is intentional and works to understand the community the brand name will represent. “It tracks in the value of regional leadership versus somebody far far away,” Webb said.
“When I'm branding, I really want to understand what's important to the community. I want something that resonates locally with the people who are going to be our prospects, be our residents, [and] with the families. Each place and each community is unique and different and special, so we try to highlight that through imagery and through our language and storytelling.”
With Montage Mason, Webb wanted a name that would fit the look and feel of the space while acknowledging the lives of the residents who live there. “When you think about assisted living and memory care, these people have incredibly full lives that they've lived,” she said. “It is kind of that montage of everyone's life story that fits that space.”
The Patterson is a nod to John Henry Patterson who founded the National Cash Register Company during the Industrial Revolution and became a huge champion for the Dayton community. It was also important for the name to feel welcoming and not clinical. “I wanted something that would be meaningful for that area, but also made it feel not like a facility,” Webb said. “We try to really break the stereotype, stigma, [and] institutionalization concepts that people have about senior living. I wanted it to feel upscale with a focus on hospitality - similar to a boutique hotel.”
CFS is structured as a traditional non-profit with a board of directors, yet, it stands out from similar organizations. The board is made up of a progressive group of volunteers from the surrounding community who work in alignment with the executive leadership to push the vision forward in ways many in that industry would be unable to. “I think as an executive team, we've done a really nice job of finding that balance of – yes we are a non-profit, we are absolutely driven by our mission, but we also know that we've got to balance that with sustainability,” Kirkpatrick said. “So everything that we do to move this organization forward is balancing the business case and the mission case.”
Growth has not been without struggle, but Kirkpatrick feels the organization has been able to learn through the struggles and overcome them. Every aspect of growth has been intentional. “It's got to be strategic growth for us,” Kirkpatrick said. “It's got to support our long term strategy of making sure Community First Solutions is a vibrant and secure organization for the next century.”
Growth has also allowed CFS to expand program offerings and develop innovative approaches to support those in their communities.
“With this growth, we have the ability to better secure that expertise to continue to reinvest in the quality of services and programs that we're offering to all our campuses,” Webb said.
With major expansions in senior care, CFS has gone from around 14 memory care beds at Berkeley Square to over 100 memory care beds between all communities. With this greater need for memory care, they realized it was vital to take action and develop programming to better fit the needs of the residents.
Memory Care Program Manager Megan Deaton did research across all CFS communities to better understand the specific needs of residents. Through this extensive research, she was able to create a program for memory care patients called Touchpoint Sensory. This program is unique to CFS communities and will roll out to residents at The Patterson in March and residents at the other communities later this year.
Touchpoint Sensory centers on empathy, multi-sensory engagement, and meaningful human connections. “Cognitively as your brain shifts and changes your senses are vastly impacted,” Webb said. “So looking at how we can engage those senses to delay the progression of Alzheimer's and dementia and also to create the best quality of life and engagement experience that residents living at our memory care spaces will receive.”
Kirkpatrick attributes the ability to pursue new programs such as Touchpoint Sensory to the growth CFS has continued to experience.
“This growth has allowed us to invest specific resources in developing new programs to ensure that our residents are getting the highest level of quality and programming that we can absolutely provide,” he said. “Without this growth, some of those things would have been hard to do.”
Moving into the future, Community First Solutions plans to embrace their vision, values, and mission as a regional leader in a diverse range of healthcare, providing innovative, personalized care through a model of hospitality that provides healthcare. “It's about how we make you feel,” Kirkpatrick said. “How you live the rest of your life in this really cool environment that's active and vibrant and engaging. Knowing that the healthcare is there, but that's not what we're centered around.”
