Following up on earlier Cheat Sheet posts on the new owners of the old Champaign County Nursing Home wanting to sell it as a drug rehab center from last October. The local nursing home facility is now in the process of being closed. From the News-Gazette:
The nursing home at 500 S. Art Bartell Road, U, which has operated as University Rehabilitation Center of C-U since the county sold it in 2019 — has launched a 60-day process to voluntarily close as of June 17.
County officials have received a formal notice of the impending closure of the facility commonly known as University Rehab...
The closure notice cites declining demand for beds, shorter post-acute stays and a low Medicaid reimbursement rate as contributing factors in the decision to close.
More at the full article here. The News-Gazette also had an editorial blaming the closure on a lack of demand (a letter to the editor disputed that framing). Champaign County Health Care Consumers had previously disputed the lack of demand claims. From the CCHCC website in March:
Low census numbers in nursing homes often correlate with quality of care. The more quality of care problems there are at a nursing home, the more likely that their census will go down because they will receive fewer referrals, and fewer families will want to place their loved ones in nursing homes with poor reputations. Many Champaign County residents are currently being transferred to nursing homes outside of our county (which is a real hardship on them and their families) because they cannot be placed in local facilities.
WCIA had more on this ongoing dispute between quality of service and actual demand in their coverage.
A Champaign County nursing home is shutting down, and it’ll cost the community 243 licensed beds. But the owner of University Rehabilitation Center says keeping it open is not an option.
“It’s bad faith behavior, and the people of this county are going to pay the price for it,” Champaign County Health Care Consumers Executive Director Claudia Lenhoff said...
University Rehab will become the third nursing home in Champaign County bought and closed by Rothner since 2018. He says he operated the Helia and Heartland buildings for a short period of time before selling them, and says while he didn’t make money in those transactions, he hoped patients would flow to University Rehab, which he bought from the county in 2019. But it wasn’t enough to stay afloat.
More at that full article here. There are also additional WCIA articles on the announcement and the impact to local families.
More background on the Champaign County Nursing Home financial crisis and eventual sale that led us to this point at the Nursing Home page on the Cheat Sheet here.
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