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Dear Editor:
About five years ago, members of the Iowa County Board and the Upland Hills Health Board of Trustees began discussions to explore whether the two organizations might work together to create a nonprofit entity that would provide senior care services for Iowa County residents.
The county and UHH share the same vision for these services - to offer exceptional care at an affordable price so that all county residents might have access to the services they need at the time they need them. With this vision in mind, we worked to see if we could develop a project that would meet this goal but not burden either entity with risk or debt that they could not absorb.
The plan was for the county and UHH to be collaborators and each dissolve their long-term care services so as to not have services that would compete with the new entity. The residents of both the county-owned Bloomfield Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center and the Upland Hills Health Nursing and Rehab Center would be moved to the new campus.
During the ongoing negotiations, both sides agreed that an assisted living facility should be part of the new complex, which was going to be called Scenic Hills. UHH board members proposed that the Crestridge Assisted Living facility in Dodgeville become part of the project, since UHH owns 49 percent of Crestridge and will own 100 percent by the end of 2020. UHH officials said they did not want to own an assisted living center (Crestridge) apart from and in competition with the new assisted living center that would be part of Scenic Hills, so proposed converting Crestridge into a memory care center and transferring ownership to Scenic Hills.
County board members decided at a Nov. 10 meeting that they did not want Crestridge to be part of the project, with the belief that the purchase of Crestridge would make the Scenic Hills project too expensive.
As the joint negotiations are amicably discontinued, the county board will determine what to do about its nursing home moving forward and UHH will continue to operate its nursing home and Crestridge.
It is the hope of both boards that the county and UHH can continue to work collaboratively to provide the best senior care services possible for the residents of Iowa County.
John Meyers, Chairman,
Iowa County Board
Jim Massey, Chairman, Upland Hills Health Board of Trustees