UPDATED: Fulton's Harbor Crest Home closing, will relocate residents

FULTON — Citing financial burdens and employment strains amplified by the coronavirus pandemic, officials at Harbor Crest Home in Fulton announced Thursday that the 84-bed skilled nursing facility will be closing.

Harbor Crest Home's board and administrator announced in a press release they plan to relocate residents and honor employees' benefits and salaries amid the closure of the facility, which has served Fulton since 1966.

Thirty-two residents currently live at the facility. Officials said up to 26 can be transferred to Big Meadows Nursing Home in Savanna. The remaining six residents will likely transfer to facilities in Mount Carroll and Prophetstown.

"This decision was clear," officials said in the release. "It was made with rapid communication with regulators, families and staff."

Harbor Crest Board Secretary Larry Russell in an interview with Sauk Valley Media said there is no projected date by which the facility must close, but that its unwinding will likely continue through September.

"We haven't been through this process before, but our main concern in following it was number one the residents and number two the employees," Russell said.

As of Thursday, the facility employs only 18 staff members, down from the nearly 30 that had worked there, Russell said.

He attributed the decrease in staffing to a "whole myriad of things," including the coronavirus pandemic and unstable staffing.

"When the virus hit back in April, several staff members left, but only a couple came back," Russell said. "Maybe they decided not to return to the health care business or maybe they wanted the unemployment. Some people just choose other locations that don't require overtime or limit vacation."

Russell added that the pandemic is a "very stressful situation for everyone" and that it "wears on people."

The facility in May transferred patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus to Generations Nursing Home, in Rock Island. Russell said the home has been virus-free since then.

It was the declining number of staff, he said, combined with the declining number of residents, trouble attracting nurses to work at nursing facilities and the high costs of overtime or paying an outside staffing agency to cover the worker shortage that led to the facility's closure.

And were the facility to keep operating, Russell said, resident care would suffer as early as next week and cash reserves would quickly be depleted.

"A lot of homes are going through this right now, and they may be in a stronger financial situation than us," Russell said. "But we wanted to close when we weren't totally out of cash, so that way we could try to do it right."

Russell said the board will work to fulfill all accrued pay and benefits for remaining employees, and that some might transfer with residents to their new locations.