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Selby rallies in attempt to keep nursing home and its 45 residents, 50 employees

Aberdeen American News - 10/12/2018

Oct. 12--There might only be a few things keeping rural communities like Selby, population roughly 625, on the map.

That's why the town is rallying in an attempt to keep its nursing home.

The Good Samaritan Center has 45 residents and employs 50 people.

That's one-fourth of the workforce in town, said Dan Biel, Selby resident and president of the nonprofit group Walworth County Care Center Inc. That's the group established to try and buy the nursing home and operate it into the future.

"(The nursing home has) been in our town a long time," he said.

Selby built the Good Samaritan Center in the early 1960s, and that means the community has a strong interest in keeping it, he said.

Preventing the job losses alone is an incentive, but there are a lot of local people who live in the home, Biel said.

"It would be catastrophic to move those residents at this stage in their lives. We don't want people to have to move, so we got to try (to keep it open)," he said.

While the Good Samaritan Society has been operating the facility since it opened, it no longer wants to run it, Biel said.

Walworth County Care Center is working closely with the Good Samaritan Society in order to ensure a smooth transition, Biel said.

The Good Samaritan Society is continuously looking at its facilities, the regulatory environment, health care reimbursements and whether each site is sustainable, said Aaron Woods, director of corporate communications.

"When there are significant challenges we look at alternatives," he said.

Discussions are ongoing in Selby, Woods said. He's hopeful.

"What's significant about this relationship is that if we're successful in gaining approval from the city, it will ensure sustainable operations for those that we care for," he said. "And that's been our mission all along. ... We believe Selby will look like a success story with this partnership."

When Biel and a few other concerned citizens first heard of the potential closure, they decided something had to be done.

"We had a choice to let it go or try to form a nonprofit and make a go of it," he said.

There were about 450 people at a Sept. 18 meeting to gauge interest, according to Biel. Some were from surrounding towns, he said, but the turnout meant there are enough people willing to stand behind the nursing home.

"It's a good facility that we're proud of, and we'd like to keep it for our town," he said.

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