Keystone nursing home breaks ground on expansion

The lone nursing care center in the small town of Keystone will almost double in size once an expansion there finishes later this year.

Employees of Keystone Nursing Care Center broke ground May 15 on a 12,350-square-foot addition to their facility. The project will bring the 45-bed nursing home up to 55, add private patient rooms, expand its therapy center and grow the commercial kitchen Keystone Nursing uses for its Meals on Wheels program.

Keystone Nursing Care Center opened in 1973 and is owned by community members who acquired shares when the company was established in the early '70s. The care center currently is 13,585 square feet and employs 110.

Administrator Tracy Hanson said the expansion will allow the care center to better serve its existing patients and the Benton County community, and expand services into Linn and Poweshiek counties.

'It was kind of my mission when I took over in 2011, is that we care for the whole community and that we can help people transition out of the care facility,” Hanson said.

In addition, Benton County has a need for 193 additional beds for elderly residents, and Keystone Nursing has been full for years, she said.

'We've been full the last three years with a waiting list of 25 deep. We were turning away people,” Hanson said. 'We're a community-owned facility, so we're a corporation, but we're owned by community members. We were having to turn away our shareholders because we were full.”

The goal with the expansion, Hanson said, is to grow services that can assist patients in returning and staying in their homes, instead of needing to stay long-term in the nursing home. With service providers and the government looking to save money, keeping patients at home can help reach that goal, Hanson said. Also, patients often prefer living at home than in outside facilities, she said.

'It's one of the reasons we did our Meals on Wheels program is because we can go out to their home and provide them with a healthy, nutritious meal. A lot of times just having that person that checks on them once a day and gives them a good meal will keep them in their home a lot longer than having to bring them in to the nursing home,” Hanson said, noting her center delivers between 400 and 600 meals a month.

Hanson said the expansion should be complete in December and open in January 2019. Renovations also will include updates to the care center's parking lots and courtyard, according to a news release about the groundbreaking.

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