A developer hopes to break ground this spring on both an assisted living facility and a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center on Eynon Jermyn Road in Archbald.\n<\/p>\n
Scranton-based Senior Health Care Solutions plans to begin construction by June on two health care facilities in the Highlands Archbald housing development on Eynon Jermyn Road, company President Michael P. Kelly said. The facilities will be on an undeveloped piece of land near the intersection of Columbus Drive.\n<\/p>\n
The project involves simultaneously developing a 60-bed skilled nursing and rehab center and a 50-unit assisted living residence, Kelly said. Construction will take 12 months, and if his timeline goes to plan, Kelly expects to begin accepting applications for the assisting living facility next spring.\n<\/p>\n
The buildings will be his company\u2019s 26th and 27th developments across northeast and central Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
A skilled nursing and rehab center is licensed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; third-party funding covers a person\u2019s stay and rehabilitation, Kelly said, explaining the facility is for those who need 24-hour skilled services with round-the-clock services from nurses. An assisted living facility is paid for privately by residents and is intended to assist people with their daily activities, like food and medication administration, while they are free to come and go as they please, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just for people that aren\u2019t quite well enough to live at home, but they don\u2019t have any really critical acute health issues that they require a skilled nurse,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
The two facilities will create a combined 115 to 120 full-time equivalent jobs, including administration, office, business, nursing, dietary and housekeeping roles, Kelly said, calling them, \u201cGood-paying, life-sustaining positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea for the health care facilities arose when Kelly ended up sitting next to Ken Powell, the developer of the Highlands, on a flight last year. While chatting, Powell expressed interest in bringing a project like Kelly\u2019s to the Highlands, Kelly recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018That\u2019s a great idea,\u2019 \u201d Kelly said. \u201cIt was a perfect fit for what he\u2019s doing there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly and Powell worked out a deal, and Kelly presented plans to Archbald officials last year as his project awaits final zoning approvals, which he\u2019s optimistic he\u2019ll receive.\n<\/p>\n
For his most recent Lackawanna County project, Kelly worked with United Neighborhood Centers of Northeastern Pennsylvania to open the Bucktown Center last summer, creating 40 senior apartments in Dunmore. He plans to break ground on a 48-unit Dunmore Personal Care Residence in the summer. He also opened the 60-bed Tunkhannock Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Tunkhannock last year to provide long-term care in Wyoming County, and it filled in 60 days, he said.\n<\/p>\n
Senior Health Care Solutions additionally just sold three long-term care centers in Northeast Pennsylvania to Ohio-based Isle Healthcare Group for $41.1 million, according to a press release from Kelly. The three facilities were the Delaware Valley Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center and the Delaware Valley Personal Care in Matamoras, as well as the Green Valley Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center located in Pottsville.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Archbald facilities will allow Highlands residents to age in place, Kelly said. Many of the residents are \u201cempty nesters\u201d who relocated to the Highlands after their kids moved out and no longer wanted to take care of a large home, Kelly said.<\/p>\n
It creates a \u201cone-stop shop\u201d and serves as the ideal long-term care project where every facet of care is on one campus, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey live in their or their townhouse until maybe they need a personal care home, they could just go up the street and stay there,\u201d he said. \u201cIf their physical condition deteriorates worse, the skilled (nursing and rehabilitation center) is right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The development already cleared its major hurdle \u2014 state approvals, Kelly said.<\/p>\n
Because of a longtime moratorium on nursing homes, developers have two options: request a special exception \u2014 which Kelly was denied for \u2014 or buy an older, antiquated home that no longer conforms to current life-safety codes, he said.<\/p>\n
Senior Health Care Solutions successfully did the latter, buying the licensure rights to beds from the Diocese of Allentown and receiving permission from the state to relocate them 60 miles to Lackawanna County, Kelly said.<\/p>\n
The new facilities will help offset the closures in recent years of two Lackawanna County nursing homes, he said, citing the the 2024 closure of the Mountain View Care and Rehabilitation Center in Scranton and the closure last year of Aventura at Terrace View in Blakely.\n<\/p>\n
Those closures removed 450-plus beds from Lackawanna County, creating a shortage that allowed them to negotiate a deal with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services to transfer the beds from Allentown, he said.<\/p>\n
Archbald Council President Louis Rapoch called the project a boon to the area, especially with the region having a large population of senior citizens. People want to stay local without having to start a life a different area, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of having all of these data centers humming and just going wild in that area, anything that we can do for the seniors and have the accessibility would be wonderful,\u201d Rapoch said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A developer hopes to break ground this spring on both an assisted living facility and a skilled nursing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2117,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-156619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-archbald","9":"tag-lackawanna-county","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-scranton","14":"tag-scranton-headlines","15":"tag-scranton-news","16":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}