A husband and wife team are transforming a Belvidere, Illinois nursing home into a post acute facility. Jim and Marilyn Palazzo are renovating the 30-year-old Biltmore nursing home building into a post-surgical, post-acute care facility for patients after they have been treated at a hospital for procedures such as hip or knee joint replacements.
The Palazzos are pumping about $3.5 million into renovating the building. That money will pay for bigger, more modern rooms with flat-screen TVs and new beds, a restaurant that will serve gourmet meals, new bathrooms with Kohler fixtures and earth-tone decor, a new therapy wing and a spa that will offer massages, manicures and pedicures. The facility will be known as the Homebridge Center, a nod to the efforts of getting people back to the comfort of their homes after treatment.
The facility will serve residents of Boone and Winnebago counties. Rehabilitation facilities are becoming more common as the population ages and joint replacements and other orthopedic surgeries have become more common. The other reason for the increase in rehabilitation facilities is that many nursing home owners have quickly learned that short-term rehabilitation is far more lucrative than long-term stays.
Other rehabilitation facilities in in the works. Van Matre HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital is spending $4.8 million on a 9,471-square-foot upgrade that will add 10 beds, boosting the hospital’s number of licensed beds to 50. That project is expected to be completed by early 2009.
There will always be a need for nursing homes acknowledged the new owners of Homebridge. According to the owners they will dedicate a part of their facility to long-term nursing care. Boone County has three nursing homes, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health Web site, and there are 29 nursing home facilities in Winnebago County. Read more about the transformation of this Belvidere, Illinois nursing home here.