The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development granted the Adair County Nursing Home District, known locally as Twin Pines Adult Care Center, an $11 million Community Facilities Direct Loan to build a modernized facility.
Construction on the new facility is expected to begin during late spring of 2016. The building will have a residential atmosphere, and it will contain an integrated technology platform not currently found in any long-term care facilities in Missouri. Robert Rollings Architects LLC will design the facility, which will border the south property area of the Adair County YMCA.
Twin Pines Administrator Jim Richardson says the board of directors decided to build a new facility following a feasibility study conducted a year and a half ago which determined it would be more cost and time effective to rebuild elsewhere rather than update the current building.
“When the analysis came in, the board decided that instead of investing the money in an old facility, where even when we were done the building would have the old layout, it was more economically viable to build a new facility,” Richardson says.
Richardson says the current building will be sold after the new building is constructed and the company has moved the residents into it. He says proceeds from the sale will go to repay the loan.
Richardson says the new center will not have an institutional design, but will be set up in neighborhoods, which he says will each focus on a specific aspect of care Twin Pines provides. Richardson says they want the building to feel and look like homes, with new ways of delivering care in therapy and nursing, and to bring in new technologies that enhance the communication between residents and staff.
Richardson says many of the new technologies haven’t been implemented in facilities yet and won’t be open to long-term facilities until next year, though he says there were some prototypes in Iowa and St. Louis.
“With the new facility we will have four distinct neighborhoods,” Richardson says. “Each one will have its own entrance and that will specifically target an area of care [rehab to home, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and long-term care].”
Richardson says it will be more of a challenge to be located farther from the hospital, but this location will give the facility the access to the bypass it needs.
“We wanted access to the bypass because a lot of our admissions come from Columbia from the acute center,” Richardson says. “With our rehab-to-home program, we’re in Columbia two or three times a week.”
Richardson says it will be more of a challenge to be located farther from the hospital, but this location will give the facility the access to the bypass it needs.
Tanya Playle, program director of therapy, says the therapy in the new building will be enhanced.
“We’ve really put a lot of time, energy and thought into making this a unique experience,” Playle says. “We’re thinking outside the box and looking at what it’s going to take to … enhance people’s stay for the next 20 years … and so some of the things we’re looking at are still trade secrets.”
Director of Nursing Wendy Besler says an example of the new technology the building will have is the nurse call system, which will allow residents to have direct access to their caregiver wherever they are in the building.