Scott Williams swilliams@wolfrivermedia.com
Five years after Shawano County sold Maple Lane Health Care Center, the nursing home for senior citizens is under new ownership again.
Atrium Health & Senior Living, based in New Jersey, has purchased the 66-bed operation from Rice Health Care Facilities Inc. in a deal that also involves two other Shawano nursing homes.
County officials in 2010 sold the Maple Lane nursing home at N4231 State Highway 22 for $2 million to Rice Health Care Facilities.
Lynnae Zahringer, director of aging in the county’s human services department, said she has heard positive reviews of Atrium Health from county clients living in facilities affected by the sale.
“They do well at meeting our clients’ needs,” Zahringer said.
Atrium Health also has acquired Birch Hill Care Center, 1475 Birch Hill Lane, and Evergreen Healthcare Center, 1250 S. Evergreen St.
The three facilities combined serve about 170 senior citizens in skilled nursing residential settings.
The deal with Rice Health Care Facilities also gave the privately held New Jersey company ownership of 14 other nursing homes and six senior living centers elsewhere in Wisconsin and Michigan.
Mary Jo Parkins, chief operating officer for Atrium’s new Midwest operations, said the ownership change has gone smoothly and residents have experienced no changes in operations or services. Although Maple Lane is losing its administrator in an unrelated change, Parkins said most staff employees remain on the job.
“It was pretty seamless,” she said. “It’s all the same people doing the same stuff.”
Parkins also said former Rice Health Care officials are part of the new ownership group.
Atrium Health completed the corporate acquisition earlier this year and has since engaged in rebranding efforts that included assigning new Atrium Post Acute Care names to all three Shawano centers.
The three facilities employ about 240 people combined.
Some county officials and leaders in the local senior care community were unaware of the ownership change.
Maple Lane originally was built by the county as a mental health center and then functioned as a senior citizen facility until the county decided to sell the operation.
County Supervisor John Ainsworth, a member of the county commission on aging, said he hopes Atrium Health will continue Maple Lane’s strong commitment to serving residents with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. The facility recently doubled its dementia care unit from 16 beds to 32 beds.
Ainsworth said he is concerned about whether the new owners might impose changes due to economic or business pressures.
“I would hope it would just continue,” he said of the former county facility. “There seems to be a need for the sort of special care that they provide.”
Parkins said Atrium Health intends no major changes and is preparing a resident survey “to measure and ultimately enhance the overall experience for residents and their families at all our centers.”