Although it might seem incongruous for a child to grow up in what’s traditionally been known as a “retirement home,” for Kitsap County business owner Rick Krueger it set the stage for his future career.

Krueger, his wife Leslie and Krueger’s parents, Les and Betty, own and operate five individual assisted living, independent living and nursing care facilities in Kitsap, Mason and Jefferson counties.

Known collectively as Encore Communities, the five locations offer clients everything from independent living – private apartments or cottages with on-site access to everything from housekeeping and repair staff to shared social events – to assisted care and nursing care facilities that can supply 24/7 medical services, bathing and food preparation services, transportation needs and exercise and rehabilitation programs.

Les and Betty Krueger, now in their late 70s, still own the Alpine Way facility in Shelton and the Claremont East facility in Bremerton while Leslie and Rick Krueger, both 47, own the three Silverdale facilities, Clearbrook Inn, Country Meadows and Northwoods Lodge.

What makes the Kruegers’ facilities unique is the unusual perspective that having lived full-time at a facility brings and the subsequent choices – many of them outside of the industry norm – that the family has chosen to implement.

One of those choices was to run private facilities as opposed to providing services under state or federal reimbursement contracts. Loosely translated, that means that the facilities don’t accept Medicaid contracts.

“We made the decision in the late 1980s to build and manage our facilities as we saw fit and as was appropriate to our clients’ needs (as opposed to) contractual limitations,” said Rick Krueger. “We saw the need for communities that were much more personal and more devoted to client care than we felt could ever be achieved trying to work under the Medicaid program.”

Krueger admits that makes Encore Communities a bit of an anomaly, not just in the counties that they have facilities in but in the industry as a whole. Krueger estimates that “ninety-nine percent of the facilities in our three counties are contract facilities.”

The major problem with that, said Krueger, is the monetary shortfall that the contracts cause to the care providers and facility owners, resulting in the potential for reduced service. That, said Krueger, was something that he and his wife Leslie were not willing to settle for.

To make his point, Krueger said that a recent Washington State Health Care Association survey found that care facilities operating under Medicaid reimbursement contracts were averaging a ten to fifteen dollar shortfall per day, leading to either reduced services or reductions in personnel, patient programs and related expenses.

Those problems are eliminated, said Leslie Krueger, when the company manages their own facilities as well-managed businesses that take care of the customer first.

“Our first priority is to the client,” said Leslie Krueger, “and that’s one of the reasons, I think, that all five of the locations have such great word of mouth referrals. Individuals and their families come to visit a location, maybe with some preconceived notions of what they’re going to see, and walk away saying ‘I’d really like to live here.’”

The Kruegers employ more than three hundred and fifty people at the five locations, including full-time nursing and medical staff, counselors and an on-site, full-time pharmacist available exclusively to the clients of Encore Communities.

Even the landscape and maintenance staff are in-house personnel, said Leslie, and so are the in-house dietitians and the chefs that the company has hired with restaurant experience. “Our staff aren’t sub-contractors,” said Leslie. “As daily employees, they have a vested interest in the success of their facility and the well-being of the clients they work with.”

And the employee-to-client ratio is surprisingly high since Encore Communities averages three hundred and fifty to four hundred clients at any given time. Overseeing all five facilities which, combined, offer over two hundred and eighty thousand square feet of living space, is no easy task but Leslie and Rick Krueger both brought life and career skills to the table that made the company’s growth possible.

Leslie earned her degree in nursing from the University of Washington and spent more than ten years focusing on children’s health needs (including overseeing the Bremerton School District’s children’s health service) before joining the Krueger family business in 1987. Rick earned his degree in business management at PSU before deciding that the business he’d grown up with – and at – was where his career destiny lay.

Together, the couple manage the $15 million a year corporation and still find time to donate time to the community and sit on local non-profit boards.

“This is a growing industry, there’s no doubt,” said Rick. “We’ve got a fairly affluent population that’s aging and they’re looking for a certain level of comfort in their retirement and a level of expertise in the medical care and assistance care that they – or a parent – receive. We’re here to fill that need.”.