Local nursing home changes leadership
May 25—An Andrew County care center is under new management and ownership.
Shady Lawn in Savannah, Missouri, has become Abundant Acres Care and Rehab and now will be run by Andrew County.
"It will just be an amazing leadership team that we have developed from professionals around the county that have been in the long-term care industry for many years, and we will be serving and reporting to a volunteer board made up of seven individuals that live in Andrew County," said Carmen Cotton, executive director.
The care center was developed by the Andrew County Commission back in the 1900s served indigently in the area for many years. It has been overseen by several management companies in the past but now it will be locally run.
Organizations like Three Rivers Hospice celebrated the facility's staff by feeding them for Nursing Home and CNA weeks, providing a meal sponsored by local companies to boost morale.
"We go into all the facilities and we try to establish these relationships so we can establish the trust that they know that we're going to be for them and do the things that we need to do to meet them, to help them, not to take away from them as far as a hospice company goes," said Marian Templeton.
Cotton said there are plans for outpatient therapy for sports-related injuries, rehab-to-home programs and other services that will be unique to the facility.
"We hope to open a daycare center ... It will be available for any county employee," she said. "Our staff would certainly benefit from having a daycare center here, but it will be run separately from the nursing home, but it will be in the same building so that you will have residents benefit from having kids in their home," Cotton said.
Jennifer Ledden has been a been a nurse at Abundant Acres for 10 years and she said that interacting with patients on a day-to-day basis helps her learn about their lives. She said she is looking forward to the management change as it will increase opportunities to give good care.
"I think going forward it's going to be a great opportunity for the patients to have more of a home-like environment versus what we've had before was just kind of big corporations," she said.
