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ST Medical Monday: Getting to Know Medicalodges, a Kansas-Based Employee-Owned Healthcare Company

Aired on Monday, July 18th.

On this edition of ST Medical Monday, we learn about Medicalodges, a Kansas-based healthcare company that, per its website, "was launched in 1961 when its first nursing home, Golden Age Lodge, was opened in Coffeyville.... The company grew through the 1960s with the addition of eight nursing facilities. In 1969, Golden Age Lodges was renamed Medicalodges, Inc. As new care centers were built or purchased, the company expanded its products and services to include a continuum of health care. In February 1998, the employees of Medicalodges acquired the company from its previous owners in a 100% Employee Stock Ownership Trust transaction. Today, the company owns and operates over 30 facilities and operations in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, and employs over 2,000 people in the communities it serves." Our guest is Fred Benjamin, who has been the Chief Operating Officer at Medicalodges since 2009. Medicalodges specializes in eldercare, and Benjamin speaks with us in detail about changes that have occurred in eldercare over the past few decades. Benjamin's long and distinguished career includes senior management roles in skilled and sub-acute care, in hospitals, and in other for-profit and non-profit medical ventures.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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