September 1, 2017 | Allen Van Driel, CEO
For quite some time now, you have read or heard our description of plans for the future of senior living in Smith County. Now we are making the next step in implementation of these plans.
From the beginning of development of plans for a new hospital, we chose not to include the Long Term Care in our plans, but we spent a lot of time and effort trying to find a way to assure that senior care and housing WOULD be provided. We sought partners that would be willing to develop and construct modern, up-to-date senior living facilities. After more than two years of searching, we were introduced to John Grace and his partners at Kansas Senior Living. John convinced us that his firm, a not-for-profit entity, is interested in developing, building, and operating a complex of senior living facilities in Smith Center. The proposal is called the Green House Model. I don’t have the space here to fully describe the model, but it is a very new philosophy of senior care, providing resident – centered care in a home-like setting. This model represents such an improvement in care, that we are certain that residents and families will be very pleased with how it affects their care. As discussions have continued, we have been even more excited to see the proposals develop for construction of what Kansas Senior Living is calling Sunporch of Smith Center on land adjacent to the new Smith County Memorial Hospital. You can’t see construction in progress yet for those buildings, but plans are well underway.
As plans for the new senior living facilities developed, we began discussions with John Grace about issues related to transition of residents and staff to the Green House model. There will be a lot of staff education required to implement the new model. Additionally, current residents in our Long Term Care (and their families) began expressing concerns about whether they would have first opportunity to reserve space in the Sunporch facilities. As those discussions progressed, it appeared logical to begin the transition sooner rather than later. As a result, we have developed plans to transition our Long Term Care Unit to management by Sunporch of Smith Center. Last week we announced to our staff that the transition will begin in September, with the appointment of an Interim Administrator by Sunporch to manage the facility. Effective October 1, the management of the Long Term Care Unit will be fully turned over to Sunporch of Smith Center under the terms of a lease agreement. Sunporch of Smith Center will retain all current employees of the Long Term Care Unit, and will begin training them under the Green House model while they continue to provide care to the residents.
Sunporch will operate the Long Term Care until their new facilities are constructed and ready for occupancy. This is expected to be about the time the new Smith County Memorial Hospital is completed, although construction schedules for the Sunporch facilities aren’t certain yet. When the new Sunporch facilities are ready for occupancy, residents and staff will transition to the new location, and the Long Term Care Unit will cease operation at its current location.
There will be many additional details to be announced in the coming weeks and months about this transition. For now, though, we hope you will share our excitement in the first step of this transition. If you have questions about the process, feel free to ask, and we’ll do our best to provide answers.
THANKS for your continued support of our exciting projects!