Alpine explores nursing home solutions

A month after informing Alpine Valley Care Center residents the nursing home would close its doors, city leaders are hoping to open a new, community-based home to replace it.

Alpine City Attorney Rod Ponton said that while he is not in charge of finding out whether the nursing home closed illegally, he is helping the town look to the future.

“We’re on everybody’s radar screen as a nice retirement center and to maintain that reputation we need to have a good nursing home,” Ponton said.

And despite some anger from the community, Ponton said, Alpine residents can’t bee too angry about the home closing if it was losing money.

“It was a private company. They did what private companies do,” Ponton said. “But I think a community-based approach with substantial community involvement will sustain a nice option for the future.”

That includes bringing the Big Bend Regional Medical Center into the fold, Ponton said, possibly even building a nursing home next to the hospital.

Jennifer Jordan, whose mother Dorothea Rhinesmith was interviewed in the original Alpine nursing home story, said the move upset her because she didn’t know the nursing center was closing until the day after they announced it.

“I actually found out from a friend who saw it on Facebook,” Jordan said. “The nursing home didn’t even bother to call me.”

Unlike previous reports from the nursing center and local officials, Jordan said she was told her mother needed to be out of the home by the end of the week.

Nan Sigrist, whose husband Bruce was in the Alpine nursing home, also said she was told on Jan. 9 she had until Jan. 11 to move him out.

“They called me at 4 o’clock on a Monday afternoon and said that they wanted all the residents moved out in two days,” she said.

But her husband had a Jan. 10 appointment in Odessa for a carcinoma on his forehead – which Nan Sigrist said was found to be worse than they thought in a Monday today biopsy – making it even more difficult to move him in such a short time period.

Someone told her Jan. 11 they could stay for 30 days, but by that time, Nan Sigrist decided it was best to move her husband immediately and get his medical affairs in order at a new location.

“There was a camaraderie amongst those people,” Sigrist said. “Each of them has their own set of problems they have to deal with. But that morning, they all had the same problem: They didn’t know what was going to happen or where they were going.”

Jordan said living in Valentine, the family now must plan in advance for the two-and-a-half-hour trips to Fort Stockton to visit Rhinesmith.

A new nursing home will eventually become a reality, Ponton said, and the idea will be presented at the next city council meeting.

“This approach is going to be more of a long-term solution,” Ponton said.

Diana Asgeirsson cq, a city councilwoman in Alpine who originally brought up the problem with the council, said she placed it on the Feb. 14 agenda.

“At one point, there were laws that were broken,” Asgeirsson said about the way the nursing home closed.

Cecilia Fedorov, a press officer with the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, said they are not a law enforcement agency and cannot investigate any criminal wrongdoing.

However, there was an investigation by the department into the closing to make sure federal and state regulations were followed in the closing.

The department sent two investigators and an ombudsman to the facility to make sure all the residents were given options of where to live and the proper amount of time to move out.

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