America250-Enduring Success: Saint Elizabeth Community
by Mica Kanner-Mascolo
As featured on Providence Business News at pbn.com.
(Editor’s note: This is the 22nd installment in a weekly series featuring Rhode Island’s oldest companies as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.)
WARWICK – Senior services provider Saint Elizabeth Community has literally burned to the ground, but it’s still standing.
Established in 1882 as a nursing home for women, Saint Elizabeth’s original Providence facility at 109 Melrose St. was destroyed be a fire in 1914. The site was rebuilt and reopened two years later, and today, serves as the organization’s 69-apartment assisted living facility.
One hundred and forty-four years after first opening its doors, Saint Elizabeth’s has expanded to provide senior day care, affordable housing, memory care, hospice services, rehabilitation and home services throughout Rhode Island.
The organization provides care for 2,300 men and women each year, employing 600 workers.
“I think how we’ve changed over the years is looking at aging as a process and seeing how we can evolve and offer services to help with all those steps,” said Matthew Trimble, Saint Elizabeth’s CEO and president.
The organization’s strategic plan looks to offer a full range of long-term care services, he said, which is reflected in Saint Elizabeth’s programs and facilities.
Recognizing the community’s need for nonresidential care, Saint Elizabeth’s added four adult day centers in 2009: one each in Bristol and South Kingstown, and two in Warwick – one in Apponaug and one in Warwick Neck.
Three years later, the organization built 34 units of affordable housing in Warwick, and in 2016, it acquired the home health services provider Cathleen Naughton Associates. Now operating as Saint Elizabeth Home Care, the program sends certified nursing assistants to help with daily care and provide nursing and physical and occupational therapies in people’s homes.
One of the organization’s most unique offerings came in 2017 when it opened four Green House homes – a communal, noninstitutional nursing home model founded in 2003 by Maryland-based not-for-profit Green House Project. Saint Elizabeth built four, 12-bed Green House homes in a cul-de-sac in East Greenwich, where nursing home-level care is provided to residents who live like a family, Trimble said.
The homes are the only ones of their kind in Rhode Island and are four of the nearly 400 homes across the U.S., Canada and Australia, according to the Green House Project’s website.
“The clinical care is top-notch because the elders are known so well to the staff,” Trimble said. “The most incredible thing about it, though, is just the relationships that form between the staff and the elders.”
When COVID-19 hit, Saint Elizabeth saw its workforce decline as the country grappled with a healthcare mass exodus. In response, the organization launched a free training program for individuals wanting to become long-term care nursing assistants. Since 2021, the program has graduated about 40 students per year, resulting in 200 certified nursing assistants added to the workforce.
And these workers are arguably more needed than ever as an aging baby boomer generation and longer life expectancies have created the largest senior population the U.S. has ever experienced, according to the Population Reference Bureau. Rhode Island’s 2025 Healthy Aging Data Report found more than 25% of Rhode Islanders are over 60, totaling 273,831 residents, and 18% are 65 and older, totaling 195,378.
“I think it’s going to be a challenge to meet the demand,” Trimble said. “We’re going to have to figure out a way to care for people in their own homes because there aren’t going to be enough facilities out there to meet the need.”
Thus, Saint Elizabeth launched atHome Together: a membership-based program supporting seniors aging in place. Launched two months ago, the initiative provides life care specialists who create customized care plans, coordinate care and transportation, and provide ongoing safety and wellness assessments. Program participants also benefit from priority placements at Saint Elizabeth Community facilities.
“It really takes the worry out of aging,” Trimble said.
Continuing to grow Saint Elizabeth’s services and programs is part of the organization’s ongoing mission to care for the unique needs of each client, he said.
“Our commitment to caring for the person and centering the plan of care around them as an individual, I don’t think that’s ever changed,” Trimble said. “I think what’s always stayed the same is recognizing that everybody that we care for is an individual. They all have a unique story to tell.”
Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a PBN staff writer. She can be reached at kannermascolo@pbn.com.