Conspiracy theories were flying and curiosity reigned among social media posters in and around Baltimore this week. But then the truth came out: Once again, something was a long-term care company’s fault.
This time, however, it’s resulted in none of the tearful testimonies, criminal accusations or even biting remarks that so often accompany something like the previous sentence.
Unless the tears represented happiness.
“Good care, good times” is the theme plastered on Autumn Lake Healthcare’s home page. The nursing home and rehab company is surely living up to it this week.
The operator of more than 30 long-term care centers across Maryland, and others near its headquarters in New Jersey, as well as in West Virginia, Connecticut and Wisconsin, Autumn Lake is shaking a large publicity tree with its latest employee appreciation event.
Autumn Lake has bought out the entire upper deck for the Baltimore Orioles’ game Sunday at Camden Yards. That’s roughly 12,000 seats and the largest group purchase in the team’s history, officials said.
I’ve heard of plenty of impressive LTC company appreciation events in the past, from car giveaways to big cash payouts, but this has to take the peanuts and Cracker Jack, and much more for its expansiveness. Social media lit up when some season ticket holders wondered why they were getting free upgrades from their normal upper deck seats to somewhere lower in the stadium. Was it a President Biden visit? Some cheap stunt by the team?
It turns out it was actually a very expensive gesture by Autumn Lake, which in the past has bought out full days at the state fairgrounds or a nearby amusement park, to name just two examples, for its annual Family Fun Day. Estimates place the total payout at about $500,000, which includes making all the concession stands for the Autumn Lake attendees into buffets.
Once the company started adding up all the ticket requests from its member facilities, it had to keep asking for more and more seats from the Orioles, who were more than happy to oblige.
“We go big,” noted Rivka Heisler, regional director of employee experience at Autumn Lake, in a fun account of the big splash in the Baltimore Business Journal.
With the Orioles just two games out of first place in their division, this is not picking up spare inventory for some sad sack team. Instead, there figure to be plenty of happy faces in hot seats Sunday. Let’s just hope for sunny skies — the field at Camden Yards does not have a domed field.
But even if it does rain, Autumn Lake will have already lit up the skies for its employees. And a grateful long-term care sector. It’s days and stories like these that brighten the mood, whether or not there may have been labor tensions or other workplace ripples lately.
Hats off to the leaders at Autumn Lake for giving their employees a reason to smile — and the chance for the nation to read about some good publicity for a nursing home operator, of which there never seems to be enough.
James M. Berklan is McKnight’s Executive Editor.
Opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News columns are not necessarily those of McKnight’s.
