ReachMD

Dr. William H. Thomas is an international authority on geriatric medicine and eldercare. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he went on to graduate medical training in the Highland Hospital/University of Rochester Family Medicine Residency. While Dr. Thomas had planned on a career in Emergency Medicine, a part-time position as the medical director of a small rural nursing home turned into a full-time and life long passion for improving the well-being of older people. In the early 1990's he and his wife Judith Meyers-Thomas developed the Eden Alternative.

The Eden Alternative put forward a radical critique of the status quo in long-term care and offered a creative way to "change the culture" of nursing homes by bringing life and laughter into the lives of elders.  The philosophy also called for fundamental changes in the relationship between staff and management. His book on the initial implementation project, "The Eden Alternative: Nature Hope and Nursing Homes" was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1994. That same year he founded the Eden Alternative non-profit organization, which has grown to include  affiliates in Japan, Australia, Scandinavia, Europe, Canada and the United Kingdom as well as the fifty states. Dr. Thomas continues to serve as its president.

In 1999, Dr. Thomas published "In the Arms of Elders," a novel that highlighted the dignity and value of older people. In an effort to bring the books message to a wider audience he adapted the novel into a two act one man stage play.  Again working with his wife Jude, he organized a 27 city, 10,000 mile, 30 day theatrical tour that stretched from Boston to San Diego.  The tour raised approximately 75,000 dollars for a wide range of local aging services organizations and introduced thousands of people to the message of the Eden Alternative.

During the tour, Dr. Thomas saw that America's nursing homes buildings were "aging faster than the people living inside them." This led him to imagine a new approach to long-term that became known as the Green House. Supported at first by the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation and later by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dr. Thomas oversaw the construction of the nation's first Green Houses.  This model of care is now being replicated nationwide.

Dr. Thomas added a Certificate in Geriatrics in 1994 and opened a geriatric medical practice that grew to become a multi-physician group.  Although he left full-time medical practice in 2004, he continues to lecture at the SUNY Health Science Center's Clinical Campus in Binghamton. In 2007 he was appointed as Professor of Aging Studies and Distinguished Fellow at UMBC's Erickson School in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Thomas is an active proponent of person-centered care and continues to travel widely, speaking and consulting with groups that are seeking change.