Greensburg Care Center plans $1.2M expansion

Greensburg Care Center on Thursday launched a $1.2 million renovation project to tackle changing health care needs for seniors.

“This is a very important day for our community,” center Administrator Laurie Tamsay told about 30 local officials, health care representatives and others at a groundbreaking ceremony. “Families are requesting more specialized care and more privacy in the care they receive.”

The skilled-nursing center on Industrial Park Road is expanding by 4,000 square feet to add private rooms and resources for helping people with dementia, which make up an increasing number of patients, Nursing Director Terri Geary said.

About 30 beds will be added to the Center for the Memory Impaired along with a new common space and lounge. The center also will build a “Snozelen Room” — a therapeutic space that uses lights, scents, textures and sounds to stimulate the senses of dementia patients.

It also will expand classrooms for its nurse's aide training programs.

Capacity at the center will remain 120 patients, with the extra space to be used to provide better service, Tamsay said.

Greensburg Care Center opened in 1983. It has undergone three major renovations since 2001, said Mark Fox, president of Grane Healthcare, an O'Hara-based consulting company that helps manage the center.

“We have to continue to position ourselves as a ‘best buy,' ” Fox said.

The center serves long-term patients, who live there permanently, and short-term patients who have been released from a hospital but are not healthy enough to return home.

In recent years, hospitals have discharged short-term patients more quickly and those patients require extra care when they reach the center, Fox said.

Patients leaving hospitals “quicker and sicker” is becoming increasingly common in the health care industry nationwide, Fox said, and the center is adapting to that.

“We've positioned ourselves as sort of a mini-hospital,” he said.

Having more private rooms serves two functions, according to Dr. Rachel Shipley, medical director for the center. First, many patients and their families want more privacy. Second, many patients are coming into the center infected with germs that resist antibiotic treatment and need to be isolated from the others to keep the germs from spreading.

“It's a little bit of a different kind of care that they require,” Shipley said.

Work on the project is scheduled to be completed in fall 2017.

Jacob Tierney is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6646 or jtierney@tribweb.com.