As a 12-year-old, many of Deborah Meade’s days were spent selling chips, soda and snuff tobacco to the residents at what was then Elberta Convalescent Home, a skilled nursing facility in Warner Robins, GA. The facility was built by her father, Wayne Lowe, and operated by her grandfather, Joe Lowe.
Now a third-generation administrator, she says skilled nursing and caring for the elderly is just “in her blood.”
“Our family vacations were often to construction sites of skilled nursing facilities my father was building,” recalls Meade, 54. “I completely grew up in the business.”
After graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Georgia, she spent several years working in hotel management. Still finding herself drawn to the family business, however, she began overseeing operations at five of her father’s skilled nursing and assisted living facilities and received her administrator’s license in 1994.
Five years later, Meade leased a pair of buildings from the existing family business to create her own company. Today, as CEO of Health Management, she oversees the management of three skilled nursing facilities, a post-acute care center, and an assisted living community, all located in Georgia. All told, the portfolio translates to 365 skilled beds, 88 assisted living units and 39 independent apartments, with 400 employees overall.
“My day-to-day is a little on the crazy side,” she says. “At any given moment, I’m at one of five different facilities and different worlds.”
Timeline
1987
Completes bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Georgia
1988
Became a sales and marketing manager for Radisson Inn
1989
Starts work with family company, DBA Health Management, as a financial and operations manager
1994
Earns nursing home administrator license
1994
Starts as nursing home administrator for Peachbelt Healthcare
1999
Becomes owner/operator of Health Management LLC
2011
Begins term as chairwoman of the board of directors for the Georgia Health Care Association
2011-2013
Serves on the National Center for Assisted Living Board as member at large
2018
Begins term as vice chairwoman of the board of governors for the American Health Care Association
She’s also grooming her daughter, Kaelyn, 23, who received her administrator’s license this year, to take over the post-acute facility. Meade’s son, Erik, 27, works in medical device sales.
Relatively early in her career, Meade recognized that she has a passion for advocacy work. She became involved with the Georgia Health Care Association and has served on the GHCA board of directors since 2005.
Outside of work, Meade spends her weekends with her husband, Randy, and a host of other family and friends, cheering on the University of Georgia Bulldogs.
“Football is not a game for us — it’s a religion,” Meade says. A catastrophe is about the only thing that will keep her from a game. Last September, she had tickets to see the Bulldogs play at the University of Notre Dame and had to miss it to help manage the evacuation of her skilled nursing facilities in Savannah during Hurricane Irma.
Her team successfully transferred the facility’s 67 patients to another one of her facilities farther inland, and returned them back to Westview several days later “without even a skin tear,” she recalls.
They threw a football viewing party with all the displaced residents and the Bulldogs won a nailbiter of a game, 20-19.
The perfect coming together of two things deep in her blood.
From the October 2018 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
