ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603180053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
BEDFORD COUNTY BOARD of Supervisors has voted to appropriate $350,000 to finish an overhaul of the 35-year-old county-owned building.
Fancy a haircut in the beauty salon at the Bedford County Nursing Home?
Hope you don't mind sharing because the ``beauty salon'' is an open closet in the men's bathroom facing a toilet. It's the only spare room with a sink and space enough for a chair in the crowded, outdated nursing home.
If you're prone to getting cold, you may want to bring a heater with you, just in case. In the basement of the county-owned and --operated nursing home, there are two boilers to heat the building. Only one works.
The broken boiler, which is 33 years old, won't hold water and can't be fixed. The working heater was built 36 years ago, and you can't get parts for it anymore. It's 13 years past the manufacturer's stated life expectancy, and there's no backup if it breaks down.
``If that boiler goes out, we'll be at your house,'' joked Janet Beahm, the nursing home administrator.
Last week, after years of battling frustration and budget cuts, Beahm learned the nursing home finally will be able to complete a much-needed renovation first proposed in 1988.
At the urging of Supervisor Roger Cheek of Huddleston, the county Board of Supervisors voted to appropriate $350,000 to finish an overhaul of the 35-year-old building and to correct deficiencies including a leaky roof, outdated fire alarms, electrical code violations and leaking hot-water pipes.
But even though county Planning Commission Chairman Fred Baldwin had warned in a recent report that ``failure to make these improvements places the county at considerable liability risk,'' getting funding for the renovation still wasn't easy.
``I was determined to get the money, plain and simple,'' said Cheek, a first-year supervisor assigned to the board's nursing home committee, ``but I was told I probably wouldn't get it.''
When the renovation was first proposed, the cost was estimated at $500,000, but the board allotted only half that. A scaled-back renovation took place in 1992, and a new dining room and kitchen were built, but other problems went unaddressed.
However, this year, all the supervisors ``came along and got on board for it,'' Cheek said.
He chalks that up to perseverance. He made two long visits to the nursing home to study its problems. After that - with the help of veteran Supervisor Calvin Updike, who's also on the nursing home committee - Cheek lobbied for money for the home at every opportunity during this year's budget discussions.
Beahm said he is overjoyed that the renovation finally will take place this year, but, until it's completed, the home still will have to make do with conditions that can be hard to live with.
"All I can say is I have felt a sense of frustration," Beahm said before last week's board vote. "We're not asking for carpeting, we're not asking for wallpaper, we're not looking for the perks. We're looking to replace equipment or systems that are either outdated, have deteriorated, or sometimes malfunction."
If the nursing home lacks anything, it's perks.
There are no private rooms. The home's 53 residents sleep two or four to a room. (The home has capacity for 56.)
Exposed pipes from the sprinkler system run overhead in the hallways. The blank, white cinderblock walls are decorated, sparingly, with faded dark-colored prints that date to the 1960s or earlier. The only splashes of color are from bright construction paper that frames letters written to residents by elementary school students.
But decoration is the least of Beahm's concerns, and she hopes the renovations will address most, if not all, of the problems, including:
Replacement of the roof.
The flat tar-and-gravel roof is at least 20 years old; because it's flat, it doesn't comply with state health-care codes. When it's hot, the tar bubbles and blisters, creating holes and cracks. When it rains, the roof holds water and then leaks, seeping through walls and ceilings.
``Unfortunately, it tends to leak into the ceilings of our residents' rooms,'' Beahm said. ``It's a little difficult when you've got residents sleeping where you've got to pull their beds away from the walls and disrupt their routine'' to fix leaks.
Construction of a new nurses' station.
During shift changes, as many as 10 to 15 nurses need to use the same nurses' station - a 10-by-12-foot room crowded with a desk, office furniture and medical-supply carts.
Beahm hopes to turn the old station into a new beauty salon.
Water pipes and air conditioning.
Old, metal pipes run from floor to ceiling in residents' rooms, just inches from some beds. Water in the pipes reaches 180 degrees, Beahm said, ``and when you have 180-degree water and it springs a leak, that's not very safe, is it?''
Cheek agreed: ``The danger's there for someone to get scalded.''
Beahm wants the pipes moved, but, if nothing else, she said, they will be replaced and insulated when the new boilers are put in.
Also a problem are air-conditioning units mounted in the walls below the windows in resident rooms. For one thing, they're not hooked to the home's emergency generator power supply. If the main power goes out in the summer, there's no air conditioning.
The units also are so old that parts no longer are made for them. And when they were put in, the installers used a sledgehammer to make holes in the cinderblock wall; as a result, the units don't fit snugly and heat escapes through cracks in the wall in the winter.
Beahm explored putting in roof-mounted heat pumps or central air, but there's no space for ductwork between the roof and ceiling. The nursing home is considering buying new window units.
Fire alarms, nurse call boxes and intercom system.
The fire alarms are more than 30 years old. If they function properly, they'll tell what wing or floor of the nursing home a fire is on, but they won't pinpoint it to a room.
The nurse call and intercom systems also are more than 30 years old, and parts aren't made for them, either. The nurse call is a one-way system that doesn't meet current health-care codes.
Besides that, Cheek said, ``probably the worst transistor radio you ever heard is what the voice quality is like.''
Roanoke and Lynchburg have sold their nursing home franchises to private health-care companies, mainly because of financial losses. Bedford County's nursing home has lost about $250,000 in three years. That, added to concerns about taxpayer liability, has some Bedford County residents asking if they need to be in the nursing home business.
``I've heard that brought up a lot,'' Cheek said, ``but, like it or not, we are in the nursing home business, and we do have to maintain it. ... I think as long as the taxpayers are willing to support it, we should keep it.
``You see, we've got two things we have to do in this county: We have to educate the children, and we have to take care of the elderly. Everything else is secondary.''
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. 1. The only nursing station at theby CNBBedford County Nursing Home is not big enough for the staff on any
shift, and during shift changes there can be 15 staffers in the
office. Registered nurse Loretta Grant is on duty at the desk. 2.
Because of cramped quarters, the men's restroom also serves as the
beauty salon for the women at Bedford County Nursing Home. 2. A
resident of the Bedford County Nursing Home works a jigsaw puzzle in
the old dining room now used as an employee lounge. color.