Residents find new homes after care center closing

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com 

The closing of one Charles City nursing facility has resulted in an influx of new residents and new employees for the other care centers in town.

Cedar Health announced at the beginning of October that it would be closing its doors because of financial considerations. That meant 46 residents needed to find new places to live.

Sue Ayers, an administrator at the Chautauqua Guest Homes, said Thursday that the organization’s two nursing facilities in Charles City have accepted 28 of those residents — 18 at 9th Street Chautauqua and 10 at 11th Street Chautauqua.

Ayers also announced a new administrator for the Chautauqua Guest Homes, including the Riverside Senior Living center, and announced a construction project that will double the number of assisted living apartments at Riverside.

Mary Shupe will be taking over administrative duties as Sue and David Ayers transition to a less hands-on phase of management for the Ayers family-owned properties.

Shupe has more than 20 years’ experience in nursing home administration in nonprofit and for-profit settings in small towns and larger cities.

She said Charles City is a nice community and she was attracted by the Chautauqua facilities and their quality of care.

“I want to be associated with good quality, and I think this is a good setting for that,” Shupe said.

David Ayers announced that a 20-apartment addition will be built onto the existing 20-apartment Riverside Senior Living center.

He said they are working with Craig Skott of Skott & Anderson Architects of Mason City to design the addition to the southwest side of the building. Construction is expected to begin in the spring and will take about nine months, he said.

Sue Ayers said it is about a $1 million project.

She said it’s an exciting and busy time for the company, both because of the changes and because of all the new people moving in.

The Chautauqua sites had space available for the Cedar Health residents, Ayers said.

She said the community probably had more licensed nursing care beds than it could support, and called the Cedar Health closing “a market adjustment-type situation.”

“It’s unfortunate — it’s hard to talk ‘market adjustment’ when you’re dealing with people’s lives,” she said. “That’s where we want our focus to remain — on the lives of the residents that we’ve accepted.

“Our big concern right now is maintaining the quality for the 28 residents that we are taking from that facility,” Ayers said, “We remain very, very committed to keeping our quality high.”

She said her understanding is that all the residents of Cedar Health will have found new residences by next Monday.

“We’ve been working very closely with them and we have really a collaborative professional relationship with them,” she said. “They have been wonderful about sharing information that will make the transition easier for the residents.”

In addition to the residents moving over, the Chautauqua homes have hired some of the Cedar Health staff.

“We actually announced a huge — better than 15 percent — salary increase to existing staff and to our payroll schedule because we wanted to make sure we were competitive with the influx of new patients. Our current staff got a great increase,” Ayers said.

“We participated in their job fair,” said Shupe, referring to efforts to find new positions for Cedar Health employees. “We’ve been very excited to hire as many as we possibly could because we knew they would allow the continuity of care for Cedar Health residents and also supplement the staff that we needed. We think it’s going to be a good partnership.”

Ayers said, “We’re excited to have them as team members.”

Shupe said that, especially with the new residents at the Chautauqua homes, she wanted to remind people that volunteers are always welcome and encouraged to help with activities for the residents.

“If anyone volunteered at Cedar Health we would certainly welcome them to volunteer with us,” Shupe said. “It’s good to have people from the community in, assisting with or leading. It also adds a socialization factor.”