Americare expands to meet rise in senior living demand

Sally and Jim Orgren moved to Columbia from Buffalo, N.Y., in October. Since then, they have been living with their daughter, Christine Sandvol, and keeping their furniture in a storage unit.
Sally, 80, and Jim, 82, are planning to move into an apartment at TigerPlace, a retirement community north of New Haven Road on Bluff Creek Drive.
It wasn’t the slightly warmer climate of mid-Missouri that lured them.
“Our daughter lives here, and we decided we wanted to come live here, too,” Sally Orgren said. “(Sandvol) did a lot of research on all the different retirement homes and came to the conclusion that TigerPlace was the very best.”
After being on a waiting list since their arrival in October, the couple found out that an apartment has just opened up. As Sally Orgren pointed out, four months is a short wait for a spot in TigerPlace.
“We were fortunate because we came at a time when there wasn’t a long list,” she said.

Independent living apartments at TigerPlace have been in high demand for some time. In December 2008, Sikeston-based Americare, which operates TigerPlace as well as the adjacent Bluff Creek Terrace and The Arbors, finished adding 23 apartments to TigerPlace. Those were filled within a few months.
“We currently have a waiting list on all three properties we operate right now and have for the last two years,” said Brian Donner, Americare’s operational director for the Columbia market.
About half of Americare’s residents hail from locales other than Columbia, Donner said, and they often move here to be closer to family and take advantage of Columbia’s medical infrastructure. Donner has seen demand pick up for senior living, not only because of demographic shifts but also because of the resources Columbia has to offer.
“I think there’s more demand in Columbia because of MU and the fabulous health care system,” he said. “Columbia’s market is ideal for seniors. It’s a one-stop shop.”
Americare obviously feels that way because it’s in expansion mode. In June, the company expects to finish its $14 million rehabilitation and transitional care facility that will connect to TigerPlace. The Neighborhoods at TigerPlace will have 102 beds and 70 rooms as well as a swimming pool, a public community room and child care facilities. The Neighborhoods will serve as a temporary home to people undergoing therapy and treatment but who are expected to move back into independent or assisted living accommodations,

The massive expansion will more than double Americare’s staff of about 50. The company is “actively recruiting” new employees to fill 125 positions created by the expansion, 75 percent of which are full time, Donner said. With other rehabilitation centers usually filled to capacity here, Donner said he expects The Neighborhoods to fulfill a big community need.
“The marketplace here in Columbia, there’s really not a transitional care facility available,” he said.
And the company broke ground in October on another Columbia project, this one at Forum Boulevard and Chapel Hill Road in southwest Columbia rather than near its existing operations.
The $6 million project is expected to be finished by late 2011 or early 2012. The complex, which hasn’t been named, will have 28 assisted living apartments and 16 specialized care apartments for Alzheimer’s patients. Donner said he expects to have to hire another 25 to 30 full-time employees to staff that operation, which he hopes fills a void in that area of the city.
“In southwest Columbia, there really are no health care types of living arrangements,” he said.
Americare’s expansions come at a time of uncertainty in the health care industry as a whole and retirement care in particular. The company owns about 85 assisted and independent living retirement homes in the region, and “they’re continually buying and building,” Donner said.
“In this profession, there are not a whole lot of companies out there that have the financial strength to continue to grow,” he said.
The health care reform law includes language that could translate into big rule changes in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to nursing homes as well as a new insurance program to provide at-home care for seniors. Those programs and rules have yet to be finalized, and the uncertainty has made some nursing home operators nervous. Donner said new changes, if they come, would actually be more of the same.

“The medical system for long-term care and skilled nursing has always been a saga,” he said. “It’s always changing.”
City planners see Columbia as ideal for retirement communities such as those being built by Americare. They recently had the City Council amend the zoning code to allow skilled nursing facilities to be built on residentially zoned land, which they hope will lure other providers or encourage those already here to expand.
“When you have as medically rich a community as we do here, you want to make a simpler way to get to the end result,” Columbia Development Services Manager Pat Zenner said.
Sally Orgren said she and her husband indeed were impressed by the local health and senior care facilities but also pleasantly surprised by how friendly everyone is in town.
After a visit to University Hospital, Orgren recounted, “Jim said … they must be teaching kindness along with their medical skills.”