Alzheimer’s Center to Get $8 Million Renovation

October 18, 2012

An Alzheimer’s disease care facility is getting an $8 million upgrade.

Housed on the Heather Hill extended care health and nursing campus, the Corrine Dolan Alzheimer’s Center will undergo renovations next year, which may include converting the facility into a hospice center for terminally ill patients, said Heather Hill Executive Director Jim Homa.

The upgraded building’s use, however, will not be determined until the remodeling work is nearly done, he added.

Alzheimer’s patients have been moved into either two 14-bed dementia apartment units in the Liberty — a Heather Hill assisted living facility — or a 30-room skilled nursing section in what is referred to as the main building on the Heather Hill campus, located at 12340 Bass Lake Road.

The Liberty has retained 42 assisted living apartments that are separate from the Alzheimer’s care units, Homa said.

“The Dolan building is a nice building, it’s just a little outdated,” he said. ‘We’ve done some renovations since we’ve been here in 2011, but what we have to finish, we can’t (complete) while its occupied.”

Homa added, “It’s a beautiful building. It has so many good aspects that we would never in a million years tear it down, although it needs to be reconfigured for other uses.”

About $4 million in renovations have been made in the last several months to upgrade facilities at the Heather Hill campus, including additional buildings for Alzheimer’s patients, Homa said.

“Now, we actually have more Alzheimer’s and dementia services available than have been here since 2007,” he said.

There were only 26-private pay Alzheimer’s patient beds when Provider Services purchased Heather Hill from University Hospitals of Cleveland in 2011.

There are now 58 beds, including the beds in the Liberty and the skilled nursing beds in private rooms within the main building, Homa said.

As part of the renovations, the skilled nursing units “look very similar” to those in the Corrine Dolan building, but are more modern, he said.

“We’re pretty proud of what has been done,” Homa said.

Part of the renovations also have included fire and safety improvements to several Heather Hills buildings.

“For our use, it wasn’t enough to make things come into compliance. We have higher standards,” he added.

Homa claimed most families were happy with the transfer of their loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease to the Liberty and the main building, although others were not.

Among them is Claridon Township Trustee Ed Ward, who took his wife out of the Corrine Dolan Alzheimer’s Center several weeks ago because of poor management.

“The care there is excellent because of the girls there — the aides and nurses there,” Ward said. “But as far as the management, it is poor, the billing is screwed up and they never give you any information about what’s happening to the (Dolan) building.”

Homa said Heather Hill officials have “tried to be as accommodating as we could, but I’ve had people who have been unhappy since University Hospitals was here. There have been rumors we are tearing it (the Dolan building) down, but we are not.”

With the upgrade of Alzheimer’s disease facilities, Provider Services sees a growing need for hospice care facilities in the county, Homa said.

The upgrade of the Dolan building is the next phase in renovations for the campus, which will begin early in 2013 and may take as long as a full year to complete, Homa said.

The work will include an upgrade of bathrooms, which he said are “antiquated,” and the possible elimination of some rooms — a move that may be necessary in order to increase room space and improve overall facilities in the Dolan building.

The outside architectural design of the building will be retained as will outside gardens, “which we put a ton of money into because it wasn’t being kept up when we took it over,” Homa said.

But Ward contended the Dolan building’s rooms already are larger than other nursing facilities he looked at.

“It is a nice building,” he said. “They’re just wanting to make more money than they already are making. That’s my contention.”