St. Margaret’s at Mercy is an adaptive reuse of the Medical Office complex at Mercy Hospital destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The new skilled nursing facility is a 116-bed facility arranged in residential household groupings of 9 to11 beds. Each residential household is self sufficient with a hearth room, dining and activity area, country kitchen and spa facility. The four level facility has gracious common areas for flexible usage by residents and staff. The ground floor includes a permanent Chapel and Multi-Purpose activity room, a Fitness Center for use residents and neighborhood residents, and a Pharmacy and Convenience Store.
Each floor of the facility has two activity spaces to accommodate exercise, gardening, crafts, and music activities. The ground floor residential neighborhood is specially designed for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and MS residents, as part of the “Steve Gleason” project, an ex-New Orleans Saints kicker who contracted ALS. This household is designed with cutting-edge technological innovations to allow residents to live more independently.