A Green House nursing home has private bedrooms and bathrooms, a residential-style kitchen, and communal dining and sitting areas. Just like traditional nursing homes, they are staffed with the same staff that includes physicians, nurses, social workers, dietitians, and therapy personnel.

Research suggests that residents of small nursing homes appear better satisfied and report a better quality of life than do residents of traditional large nursing homes.

Most of the newly developed green house nursing homes are pre-wired with intercoms or call buttons.  However there are times where a wireless intercom system is needed. In houses that have been retrofitted to act as a nursing home, installing a wired system may be cost prohibitive. Also a wired system typically requires a resident to go to where the intercom is located to make a call. With a portable wireless unit, they can put it where they are.

The main deficiency of these wireless intercoms is that there are a limited number of channels available so if multiple units are on the same channel, any message will be broadcast to all units on the same channel. Units like the WireFree Portable 900MHz Wireless Intercom System set up a private conversation between two intercoms when someone responds to a broadcast.

While a wired intercom system may not fit all the needs of a green house nursing home, there are applications where it works very well.