Nursing home in Grant closing mid-July

    After more than 50 years of service to the area’s elderly and their families, Golden Ours Convalescent Home in Grant will close July 15.
    The Perkins County Health Services Board made the decision at a meeting Monday.
    The closure will affect 13 residents at the home, who will have to find other options for care. Also affected are the facility’s 15 full and part-time employees.
    Lynne West, CEO at Imperial’s senior care facilities, said it was heartbreaking to hear of the news.
    West attended Monday’s board meeting in Grant.
    “You could just hear it in their (the board) voices. The board was emotionally affected,” she said.
    West offered to do whatever she could to help if Golden Ours residents would like to consider moving to Imperial.
    Currently, Imperial Manor has 10 beds available, West noted, but can’t offer all of them now due to staffing that would need to be added and keeping some rooms available for local needs.    
    She said there is a need to keep a couple beds available for surgery discharges and hospice care for Imperial residents.

    For those needing less care, there are ample openings at Parkview Assisted Living and Imperial Heights, the latter an independent living facility, she noted.
    West said their staffing shortages have improved. They are fully staffed with RNs, and for the first time since her hiring nine months ago, the dietary and housekeeping departments have full staffs.
    They are still in need of one full-time evening and two full-time night shift CNAs, and one LPN.
    Her offer to help includes traveling to Grant for on-site job interviews with their current staff, she said.
    West said she shared her sympathies with Neil Hilton, CEO at Perkins County Health Services.
    “It’s just sad. There are so many homes that have closed,” she said.
    One of the closed homes in Ravenna donated some of its furniture to the facilities in Imperial.
A financial decision
    Rumors of the potential closure have milled throughout the Grant community and area for months, with several people expressing opposition to the board directly and through Letters to the Editor urging the search for a solution to keep the home open.
    However, in the end, the decision came down to five board members who, according to Board President Mary Jo Gengenbach, have tried all avenues to keep the facility open, along with CEO Hilton.  
    “Having exhausted significant and ongoing efforts to maintain commitment to the facility, we are extremely saddened to be closing our nursing home facility,” Gengenbach said.
    In a statement to the Grant Tribune-Sentinel newspaper, Gengenbach said the main factors playing into the closing were staffing challenges and impacts related to COVID.
    Other issues Hilton had cited previously include a lack of adequate reimbursement from government assistance programs to the facility, an increase in cost to hire temporary workers to fill open positions that can’t be filled with permanent employees and declining resident numbers as the elderly seek to stay in their own homes longer rather than move into a long-term care facility.
    This closure announcement is one of many across Nebraska within the past few years, Hilton said.
    Over the next 60 days, Golden Ours leadership and staff will be assisting the residents and their families in transitioning to other facilities, with some residents possibly able to move to Park Ridge Assisted Living, which is also operated by PCHS, he said.
    “We currently have six open units within Park Ridge, so we certainly want to be as accommodating to residents as possible within that level of care. We expect that this can effectively be viewed to some degree as a consolidation of effort on our part,” Hilton said.
    Hilton said the staff are being asked to continue to support the transition period and will be encouraged to apply for other job opportunities within PCHS.
    “We cannot thank our Golden Ours staff enough for the sacrifice and commitment they have consistently delivered to our organization and residents. They have made such a lasting impact on our residents in supporting their quality of life,” he said.
    At this time, there are no plans for the future of the building where Golden Ours was housed.