Nursing home saved

By the end of the month, if all goes as planned, the nursing home formerly known as Valley View and Deseret Health and Rehab will be under new management.

According to Kim Deti, information officer for the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH), a lease agreement between Deseret Health Group and Health Management Services has been reached.

Health Management Services has asked for a license and WDH has sent an application for them to complete. “We are cautiously optimistic,” Deti told the Saratoga Sun Monday afternoon.

Health Management Services is expected to take over June 1 if all the steps go well.

“This case has been unprecedented,” Deti said. No one at WDH remembers having to suspend the license of a nursing home and taking temporary management.

According to Anita Mills, Joe Rude and his company, Health Management Services, out of Billings, Mont. will be in town Thursday.

The deal comes through none too soon for many at the facility who have been riding the roller-coaster of emotions over the last two weeks. According to Tim Mills, who has been one of the many volunteers helping his wife Anita and the other staff, more than one of the displaced residents desperately need to be returned as soon as possible. “One of our ladies, who is at a nursing home in Laramie keeps trying to leave.”

According to Mills, the facility in Laramie has had to put a security bracelet on the woman to keep her safely inside. “It’s really sad,” says Mills about the former resident. “She loves the outdoors, but where the facility is located in Laramie, it is not safe (for her) to be close to a busy street and doesn’t know her way around. Mills also related that one of the patients sent to Cheyenne during the state’s initial takeover of the facility last week has had “exacerbated behaviors” and went so far as to send the business office manager a letter pleading to “come home”.

It is a much more positive looking outcome than is was a week ago, Deti said, but she cautioned there are still a lot of steps to go through.