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

October 11, 2022

Tonight, the Champaign County Board will meet and, as part of the meeting, will consider the 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 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 issued an action alert last week on Friday with information about the proposed sale. We are urging 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 Meeting, which starts at 6:30 p.m. The Agenda Packet for tonight’s meeting is posted here.

 If you’d like to review CCHCC’s Action Alert from this past Friday, you can see it here.
 
There has been some good coverage about this in the news, which you can see here.
WCIA
News-Gazette

READ ON FOR MORE INFORMATION

September 1, 2022

Ever since the Champaign County Board sold the county’s nursing home in 2018, the quality and options for skilled nursing care and rehab in Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs; also known as “nursing homes”) in Champaign County has declined steadily.
 
CCHCC strenuously opposed the sale of the Champaign County Nursing Home for exactly this reason. We opposed the sale of the County Nursing Home on principle, because our research showed that county nursing homes provide higher quality of care because they have better staffing ratios since they are not trying to make a profit, and we also opposed the sale to the particular buyer that the brokers found for the county (the Rothners), because of the horrendous track record of their nursing homes.
 
Not only does our county have fewer nursing homes as a result of the sale of the county nursing home, and therefore fewer beds, to help care for an increasing aging population and those who need rehabilitation following a hospital stay – the nursing homes that remain are now severely understaffed.
 
Understaffing of nursing homes has a direct impact on patient care. And while many might think that the understaffing is a result of the pandemic, the truth is that understaffing in our area nursing homes is not simply caused by the pandemic. Understaffing of nursing homes is often a business model for the for-profit nursing home companies.
 
A recent story on WCIA-TV shows an all-too-common nursing home horror story. This story features Lisa Dixon, who is the co-chair of the CCHCC Board of Directors, and her sister-in-law, Lori Dixon (she has end-stage MS), who was a patient at Savoy’s CU Nursing and Rehab facility. Check out the reporting by WCIA’s Renee Cooper.
 
This story is all too common, and it is happening to too many of our community members. And the actual situation was far worse than what the news story was able to cover.
 
What happened to the nursing homes in our community? Champaign County used to have a few more nursing homes than we have now.

READ ON.