ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 3, 1997 TAG: 9701030065
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Warm Hearth Village has received a long-awaited green light from the state to build a new nursing home.
However, the facility will be substantially smaller and less expensive to operate than originally proposed by the Blacksburg retirement community.
The new, $5.9 million nursing home will still have 60 beds. But the Virginia Department of Health forced Warm Hearth to reduce the building's design before it would approve its construction, said John Sankey, Warm Hearth president.
Despite the revisions, Sankey said he was "elated" by the state's notification Tuesday that it had approved Warm Hearth's application for a Certificate of Public Need.
Sankey said plans are to begin construction in November and open the new nursing home by early 1999. Meanwhile, Warm Hearth will move ahead with fund raising and borrowing to pay for the project.
"A number of major things have to happen. But we're excited about it," Sankey said.
Warm Hearth has planned to build a nursing home since construction of its other facilities began in 1981. Presently Warm Hearth has independent-living town homes and apartments and the Showalter Center, an assisted-care facility.
The state imposed a moratorium on nursing home construction in 1988 before Warm Hearth could follow through with its plan.
Warm Hearth officials said that moratorium, imposed because of a surplus of beds statewide, resulted in a New River Valley nursing-home space shortage by the mid-1990s. That was one of the retirement community's main arguments for the project.
Still, to build its nursing home, Warm Hearth had to undertake a two-year campaign to demonstrate the need for a new nursing home and earn an exception to the moratorium. That effort included gaining the approval of the 1995 General Assembly and Gov. George Allen.
The final step in a series of regulatory hurdles involved the nursing home's design. Warm Hearth wanted to build a $7.3 million, 57,500-square-foot building that would cost about $90 per day for a semiprivate room.
The state wanted a smaller facility. To earn the Certificate of Public Need, Sankey said Warm Hearth had to reduce the new building's square footage by about 37 percent and reduce the projected daily semiprivate cost to about $76.
Also, he said Warm Hearth had to raise its projections of the percent of public assistance patients it would accommodate in the nursing home from 50 percent to 65 percent.
Design revisions were made without changing the nursing home's basic concept, Sankey said. "Everything just got a little smaller."
Warm Hearth still plans to include nursing home space for health care research and teaching by faculty and students of Virginia Tech, Radford University and New River Community College.
And the nursing home will still have 20 percent of its 60 beds in private rooms, Sankey said.
Having a nursing home on Warm Hearth's campus will allow residents of the retirement community to move through what the retirement complex calls a "continuum of care" for the elderly.
Sankey said during the past five years Warm Hearth has annually discharged an average of 25 residents because they needed more intensive care and the complex lacked a nursing home. Many of them preferred to stay but were forced to look elsewhere for more intensive daily care, he added.
The new nursing home will serve other New River Valley inhabitants in addition to prior residents of Warm Hearth, Sankey said.
A partnership between Warm Hearth and Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. or Carilion Health System was discussed during a fund-raising study for the new nursing home. But Sankey said reducing the nursing home's cost removed the need for such a partnership.
Warm Hearth has another component of its self-described "Health and Wellness Campus" on the drawing board, a special, long-term care pavilion for Alzheimer's disease patients.
Sankey said the approval process for the nursing home was lengthy and frustrating at times. He praised two state legislators, Del. Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg, and Sen. Malfourd "Bo" Trumbo, R-Fincastle, for helping Warm Heath gain the General Assembly's approval to pursue a Certificate of Public Need.
State approval will allow Warm Hearth to move ahead with assembling a combination of financing for the project, include private donors, debt financing and tax-exempt bonds, Sankey said.
Additional details about Warm Hearth's plans for the nursing home and its financing will be announced later this year, he added.
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