From increased facility access points and HVAC innovation to rethinking communal and private spaces, nursing homes built in the wake of COVID-19 are expected to come with a different look and feel, with more space to spread out, compared to more traditional facilities.
Charleston, W.Va-based Stonerise has 17 transitional and skilled nursing care centers throughout the state. Its newest facility, Stonerise Summersville — set to open in August 2022 — will be the first center built post-COVID by the leading West Virginia operator.
CEO Larry Pack admitted that he was thankful about the timing of the project as the leading W. Va operator was able to incorporate some of the lessons learned over the course of the pandemic into its design.
One difference between Stonerise Summersville and other Stonerise SNFs is that the new facility will have 100% private rooms.
“If we would have built this year ago, or two, three years ago, we would have designed a very different building,” Pack admitted. “COVID helped us focus on what works and what doesn’t work when we’re trying to fight a virus that at least for a period of time we had no vaccine for.”
The new 70,000 square-foot, 90-bed transitional care and skilled nursing center is expected to be the first “COVID-19 influenced” center built in the state since the pandemic started.
“The biggest difference is just the size of it,” Pack explained. “This is a 90-bed building. If we were going to build this in the 1980s, it would probably have been around 30,000 square feet.”
The new facility will serve short-term and long-term transitional and skilled nursing patients, as well as patients with Alzheimer’s.
Some of the highlights of the new facility will include expansive common areas, multiple small gathering spaces, more natural light and investment in outdoor spaces.
It will also include “Alzheimer’s neighborhoods” and dedicated hospice suites.
“This new state-of-the-art facility will create a template for future development, and we are excited to partner with Summersville Regional Medical Center and the City of Summersville to provide a variety of short and long-term care services to this community,” Pack added.
He said that the decision was made “early on” to build the new facility with all private rooms.
“We made the determination that when we’re building from the ground up, that’s something that will be mandatory for us,” Pack said. “We also decided as a company that we would not have any three or four-bed wards.”
In a report released in February., consulting firm Plante Moran found that private rooms should be “non-negotiable” for nursing homes moving forward. The researchers suggested that operators look at dining and common areas for renovation, and turn each wing of a building into its “own neighborhood” to overhaul their facilities if tearing down and rebuilding is not an option.
Pack admitted that transitioning every one of Stonerise’s facilities to private rooms would not be an easy, or cheap, task.
“As far as going in one fell swoop that’s going to be very difficult with the constraints inherent in our reimbursement,” he said.
Currently, 30% of Stonerise’s rooms are private at its existing facilities, Pack said.
“We’re working hard to continue to increase those numbers,” Pack added. “In a perfect world hopefully we can work with the payers over time to be able to create more private rooms. We’re very interested in that.”
Evidence suggests that single-resident rooms keep patients healthier, happier and is their desired option moving forward as researchers with Michigan-based consulting Health Management Associates believe it’s time for organizations like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to step up, incentivize and help finance the shift to single-resident rooms for nursing homes.
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