Ledyard’s Regional Visiting Nurse Association, which among other services has been taking blood pressure and providing physical therapy in the homes of seniors and providing the nurses in Ledyard’s five schools, celebrated 70 years of helping town residents on April 29.

Once a fixture of many similarly sized towns in southeastern Connecticut, organizations like the Ledyard VNA are now scarce. Regional organizations like the Visiting Nurse Association of Southeastern Connecticut and Hartford Healthcare have either bought up or put under their umbrellas through affiliation many of the small community healthcare organizations.

There are only four town-funded visiting nurse associations left in the state. Despite their town-funded status, local associations generate more revenue than expenses for the town.

“We have a small and amazing staff,” Karen Goetchius, director of the Ledyard Regional VNA, said. “We still think of ourselves as a small community organization.”

Ledyard’s VNA began in 1947, providing a nurse to visit each of the nine one-room schoolhouses dotted across the town’s rural neighborhoods and providing immunizations and other public health services. With the creation of Ledyard Center School in the 1950s and the consolidation of schoolhouses, the VNA adjusted; now there is a nurse and a nurse’s assistant in each of the schools.

In 1968, after Congress and President Lyndon Johnson created Medicare, the VNA began a homecare program, providing care for homebound, sick and disabled seniors.

The VNA now on average has a caseload of 70 people and for the past eight years has scored among the top 25 percent of Medicare-certified home healthcare agencies in the United States by patient outcome and financial performance.

“It evolved into what we do,” Goetchius said. “My goal is just to make residents aware they have a choice: They can ask for us and call me directly.”

In addition, the VNA also does community health visits that are free for people who can’t pay and it helps with maternal health, child health and newborns at risk. The organization also does physicals and blood pressure checks for all of the volunteers in the Ledyard fire and ambulance departments, while also providing CPR certification courses in town and flu shot clinics.

The Ledyard VNA’s office is located in Town Hall. The office can be reached at 860-464-8464.

n.lynch@theday.com