CENTERBURG — The Centerburg Point Care Center is well under way and progressing on schedule, according to Jim Griffiths, president and chief executive officer of Griffiths Health Care Group. Upon completion, the new Centerburg Point Facility will replace the two Morning View facilities that were located in Danville and Centerburg.
Griffiths acquired Morning View Danville and Morning View Centerburg from Glenn Dearth on Jan. 1.
“We had already had plans and approval from the state of Ohio to rebuild the two buildings under one roof,” said Griffiths. This approval from the state is in the form of a certificate of need.
“A certificate of need,” explained Griffith, “needs to be applied for when you want to relocate or rebuild a nursing home in the state of Ohio.”
A CON in Ohio is something that expires after two years, and the application process is a lengthy one.
“If we didn’t actually break ground and begin building by Jan. 19, 2008, the CON would have expired and we would have had to reapply,” said Griffiths.
He said his organization had everything completed in time and was able to break ground and begin construction before the CON expired.
“The excavations and the footers are finished [and] the second row of cinder block is up,” said Griffiths, “and we anticipate a mid-winter completion.”
Doug Walters, corporate director of operations for Griffiths Health Care Group, is overseeing construction of the 76-bed facility in Centerburg. He described it as a skilled nursing facility and hopes the facility will be completed by January 2009.
“We’re thinking about being able to move the residents from Centerburg over there ... no later than February [2009],” said Walters.
Residents at the Morning View facility in Danville either transferred to the Centerburg facility or to other care centers earlier this year, with the last resident leaving on Feb. 1, said Griffiths.
“At that point [Jan. 1], there were only about 12 residents in the building,” said Griffiths, referring to the Danville facility, “and some of them moved to Centerburg when they heard there was going to be a brand new building. A couple of them decided to go elsewhere.”
The employees at the Danville facility have transferred to work at other facilities that belong to the Griffiths Health Care Group, according to Griffiths.
“Some of them are now working in Centerburg ... some of them are actually working up north at one of my other buildings called Country Point in Wayne County,” he said.
Griffiths Health Care Group was established in 2005 and operates nine facilities in Ohio. Besides the construction under way at the Centerburg location, Griffiths said another care facility is under construction in Wooster. Griffiths said that although his company was founded rather recently, he has been working in the area of long-term care since his teens, when his parents established a care facility in the Cleveland area in 1974.
