Professor Frank King

Penn State's very own professor Frank King spoke Monday about his time in the world of post-acute care before he began teaching. In 1985 Professor King graduated from Robert Morris College, and at the time, the economy was struggling. So he asked himself, "What is recession proof?" Pharmaceuticals, funerals, and old people are. He made a striking point that 85+ years old is the fastest growing segment of the population, and with $1.6 trillion in long term care, "Can you walk away from this area?" Professor King certainly couldn't, and started his career in hospitality at Hyatt Hotels. From there he moved towards long term care. He became the independent senior care and apartment provider in a retirement community. The administrator of this community, who was a Nursing Home Administrator(NHA), told him he could not make it in the post-acute world because it was too hard. But that did not slow him down, he soon after opened a new facility of Forbes Regional Health System. Professor King still waned to expand senior living, so he went back to school at Carnegie Mellon to obtain his MHA. He was then tasked with opening an in-hospital skilled nursing unit at Forbes Regional Hospital, and because he was an NHA he was able to operate it. He then went to another nursing home and opened many more retirement communities. An NHA is needed to keep the doors open of any nursing home, and with 12 million people in Pennsylvania alone, there are only 1,500 NHAs. The question can again be asked, "Can you walk away from this area?"

It was 14 years later until he came to Penn State to begin teaching HPA students. Now he is proposing we take action to bring attention to the world of post-acute care by creating a Penn State program that would help students obtain their NHA license. This course would be 120 hours of class focused on nursing home administration, required by the state. This is in addition to the 800-1,000 hours of administrator in training time, the federal exams, and state exams.

Professor King left ACHCA by saying, "The most important thing a person can do in this field is to be good at what you do. Always remember that long-term-care may not be all bells and whistles, but the value lies in that you can take care of a person and make them feel at peace when they need it the very most".

Contact Professor Frank King at:

fjk14@psu.edu