As you know, the former Champaign County Nursing Home has been totally shuttered. The County Board sold the nursing home to Avi Rothner and his company, which then renamed it University Rehab. Mr. Rothner was to operate the nursing home – as a nursing home – for a minimum of 10 years. Four years into the operation, Mr. Rothner shut down the nursing home, after also failing to pay the bank loan, interest, and taxes for the purchase of the nursing home (despite providing proof from his bank at the time of purchase that he could have paid cash for the purchase of the nursing home).

The bank that issued the loan for the nursing home now wants to sell the nursing home, but needs the County Board to lift the deed restriction in order to allow the sale.

The sad story of this valuable community health asset continues, and the most tragic aspect is that Champaign County is severely underserved in terms of nursing home beds. Too many individuals in need of long term care or post-hospitalization rehab care are having to travel to communities far away in order to get the care that they need. This is a hardship for them and their families, as ease of visiting and supporting a loved one in a nursing facility is made more challenging by distance.

An amazing group of advocates, activists, health care providers, and local agencies have banded together to form a group called Advocates for Aging Care (AAC) and are working to create solutions for this health care crisis in our county. CCHCC is proud to be a member of the AAC. This is community health planning at its best!

To try to address the problem of lack of nursing care and aging care resources in our community, AAC has created a survey to try gather information on our community’s needs, and they will also be participating in the County Board’s Study Session, to be held TOMORROW at 6 p.m.

If you would like to help with , there are a couple of ways to do so.

READ ON!

March 14, 2023

Tonight, the Champaign County Board will meet as the Committee of the Whole, and, as part of the meeting, will consider another request from the Rothners to be allowed to sell the former Champaign County Nursing Home to an entity that would use the space to create a drug and alcohol treatment center.
 
The Rothners are asking the County Board, once again, to let them out of the covenant where they promised to continue to operate the nursing home for at least 10 years. The Rothners have only operated the former County Nursing Home, now called University Rehabilitation Services of C-U, for less than four years.

CCHCC isurging community members to contact their County Board Members, or the County Board as a whole, to oppose the Rothner’s request to sell the nursing home. And/or, people can speak during public participation at tonight’s County Board Committee of the Whole Meeting, which starts at 6:30 p.m. The Agenda Packet for tonight’s meeting is posted here.

There has been some coverage about this in the news, which you can see here.

The Rothners are claiming that no harm would come to the community as a result of selling the former County Nursing Home and converting it to another type of treatment facility. But this is false. Right now, many community members who need nursing home or rehab care are being sent to facilities away from our community, where it is hard for their families and friends to visit them regularly. If this nursing home goes away, our community will have lost a total of three nursing homes, thanks to the Rothners.

The Rothners should NOT be allowed to sell the nursing home, and they MUST be made to abide by the covenant they signed when they were given permission to buy the former County Nursing Home.

READ ON FOR Q&A!

Update from County Board meeting.

October 12, 2022

A big thank you to each and every one of you who took action in response to CCHCC’s action alert about the Rothner’s plan to try to sell the former county nursing home (now called University Rehabilitation Services of C-U) to a non-nursing home entity.
 
Your actions made a difference!
 
What happened at last night’s County Board Meeting:  Last night, several people spoke during Public Participation, urging the County Board to vote NO on the Rothner’s request to sell the nursing home. There were no speakers supporting the Rothner’s request.
 
The County Board voted, unanimously, to deny the Rothner’s request (not a common occurrence)!  Many spoke very eloquently and powerfully about why they would vote  no, and why the covenants in the sale contract mattered so much.

READ ON