More beds, more choices

Better living environment for Red Deer Seniors

The opening of Extendicare Michener Hill this September will provide Red Deer seniors and their families with 280 new continuing care beds and a wide range of living choices designed to meet diverse health needs.

Highlights:

• Extendicare Michener Hill, a new 280-bed continuing care facility, is scheduled to open this  September, 2010 in Red Deer. The new facility will help meet the community's growing and changing needs for seniors care and housing services.  
• Residents at the aging Red Deer Nursing Home and Valley Park Manor – two of Red Deer's oldest care centers – which are no longer appropriate for today’s standards have will moved to the new facility.  
• Extendicare Michener Hill will provides a significantly better living environment for local residents who will moved into the facility from the Red Deer Nursing Home and Valley Park Manor. It will also provides more continuing care beds and more living choices for seniors. 
• Once residents move to the new facility, Alberta Health Services will is looking into the feasibility of repurposing the aging nursing home and Manor. Keeping these facilities open for long-term care is not in the best interests of our residents. Built in the 1960's, both facilities are in poor shape and not appropriate for providing the best care. 
• The total beds at Extendicare Michener Hill (280 beds) exceeds the total beds of the closing facilities (215 beds).  Red Deer will have 65 more continuing care beds once Extendicare Michener Hill opens. 
• Alberta Health Services is committed to supporting seniors and adults with disabilities to remain as healthy, active, and independent as possible. Extendicare Michener Hill is part of our plan to ensure we provide Albertans with the right care in the right place.

Extendicare Michener Hill: A nice place to call home

Peggy Lindholm is looking forward to having a room with a view.

"I'd like to have my own window. It would be nice to have a big one so I can look outside," she says from her semi-private room at the Red Deer Nursing Home.

Lindholm, 77, will get her wish this fall when residents at Red Deer Nursing Home and Valley Park Manor move into Extendicare Michener Hill – a bright and modern continuing care facility that offers a wide range of living options, amenities and, yes, big windows overlooking trees and green space. It opens in September.

"There should be a good view from up there," says Jack McCarty, Lindholm's common-law husband. "And she doesn't have to leave town for the care she needs. That's good."  Read more...