State Veteran’s Nursing Home remodel to start in April

by Bill Knowles
WALSENBURG- The Colorado State Veteran’s Nursing Home will begin construction on the dietetics space beginning in April. The official notifications concerning the awarding of a $2.3 million grant have been posted. The project will be funded mostly by the Veteran’s Administration. When it is completed, the nursing home will have a remodeled dining facility and commons area. The grant amount will cover 65 percent of the estimated $3.49 million project.
Also the nursing home will participate in the…

health fair which will be held at the Huerfano County Community Center on April 16.
A new dietary manager, Michelle Crosson, has started working at the nursing home. Bringing on a dietary manager should save the facility about $126,000 per year. Crosson is an executive chef and a CPA living in La Veta. The hospital is currently using Aramark for its food service. That contract will be discontinued in June 2011.
The hospital board, department heads and key practitioners will be meeting with the Neenan Company, an architectural firm specializing in rural hospital design, whose previous work has been in Trinidad and Alamosa. They will analyze the hospital’s space beginning April 25 through 28.
“No square feet will be added, but we will be looking at better use of the space we have,” Todd Oberheu, the hospital’s Chief Executive Officer, said in an interview with the Huerfano World Journal in February. “Neenan will have bubble drawings for us in April.” Bubble drawings show spacial areas but very little detail showing where furniture or equipment may sit. It is a preliminary step in the process of architectural design.
Oberheu hopes to be able to open up space in the Emergency Room and allow easier access to the ER from outside without having to remove any walls or alter the structure. The interior design and reallocation of hospital space will allow the Emergency Room to increases the number of patients that may be seen at once.