Golden Ours Convalescent Home Announces Plans for Closure

Perkins County Health Services in Grant, Nebraska is announcing an official decision and accompanying plans for closure of Golden Ours Convalescent Home, to be effective July 15, 2022.

"Having exhausted significant and ongoing efforts to maintain commitment to the facility, we are extremely saddened to be closing our nursing home facility," said Mary Jo Gengenbach, President of the PCHS Board of Directors. The persistent staffing challenges of health care workers, particularly in the nursing home realm, has deeply affected our ability to maintain this effort. We have a longstanding reputation of providing excellent quality of care to the residents of Golden Ours, but has become acutely difficult to maintain a proper staffing schedule."

The Golden Ours Home has provided care to those in the area for over 50 years, with the core of the services housed in the original 1953 Perkins County Community Hospital facility. This closure announcement is one of many across the nation, including within Nebraska in recent years, with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic markedly accentuating the ongoing challenges. PCHS CEO, Neil Hilton notes, "The extreme COVID impacts that were experienced here back in late 2020 are of the nature that have been very difficult to overcome, both in terms of available depth of nursing staff locally and our inability to increase resident admissions as a result."

Over the next 60 days, Golden Ours leadership and staff will be assisting the current 13 residents and their families in transitioning to other facilities of their choice. Hilton and Gengenbach both note that some residents may indeed be in a position to transition to Park Ridge Assisted Living, as also operated by PCHS. Hilton confirms the organization's commitment to have Park Ridge in a position to function as a full service assisted living facility, noting "We currently have six open units within Park Ridge, so we certainly want to be as accommodating to residents as possible within that level of care. We expect that this can effectively be viewed to some degree as a consolidation of effort on our part."

"The 15 or so full-time and part-time Golden Ours staff members are being asked to continue to support this effort through the transition period and will be openly encouraged to review and apply for other job opportunities within PCHS. Staff that successfully continue through the transition period will be supported as such in a number of ways, including a stay and severance compensation arrangement." adds Gengenbach. "We cannot thank our Golden Ours staff enough for the sacrifice and commitment they have consistently delivered to our organization and our residents. They have made such a lasting impact on our
residents in supporting their quality of life."