New skilled nursing facility not your grandparents' nursing home

Good Samaritan Society officials are quick to point out their new skilled nursing facility at St. Martin Village is not your grandparents' nursing home.

Backing up their case is a $8 million, 30-bed facility called Serenity Place, still smelling of fresh paint and new carpet, nestled among the pines on the campus of St. Martin's Monastery in the northwest corner of Rapid City.

"This is much different than what you would see in a typical nursing home," said Serenity Place executive director Dylan Spader at Tuesday's dedication and open house at the new facility.

Long gone, Spader said, are semi-private rooms, where residents might have to share a bathroom and shower.

"No matter if you're Medicaid, private-pay, self-pay or a Medicare rehabilitation stay here for just a short time, we have separate rooms available," Spader said.

All 30 rooms have their own spacious bathrooms and oversized handicapped-access shower stalls. The building's rectangular design also eliminates long stretches of hallways with commons areas within a few steps of residential rooms. The commons areas are designed in a "living room" atmosphere, where residents, their families and other visitors can gather for activities and socializing.

The exterior of the building evokes the look of a resort. Interior decor features rich earth-tone wall and floor treatments in spacious hallways. "We've really tried to spruce it up in colors to make it a more vibrant, homey atmosphere," Spader said.

The facility, already home to a pair of residents, is the first new 24/7 nursing care center built in the state in nearly 30 years, because of a state-imposed moratorium.

The halt in new construction was implemented to address an overabundance of nursing home beds, keep Medicaid costs down and also encourage providers to look at alternative care for the elderly and disabled, such as assisted-living and independent-living centers, said Philip Samuelson, Good Samaritan regional vice president for South Dakota.

"Twenty years ago, we didn't have many assisted-living centers in the state," said Samuelson, of Sioux Falls.

The moratorium restricted new construction to replacement of existing facilities only, Spader said. The only new facilities built were to establish skilled nursing facilities on the Cheyenne and Pine Ridge reservations, he said.

The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society began talks in 2007 with St. Martin's Benedictine Sisters to build a senior community on the site of the St. Martin's Monastery, first established in Sturgis in 1889 and moved to the site northwest of Rapid City in 1962.

The complex included St. Martin's Academy, a four-year high school originally opened in 1916 in Sturgis, moved to Rapid City in 1962 with the monastery and closed in 1991.

The nonprofit Good Samaritan Society began development of the senior living campus in 2011, with construction of twin homes, later adding a 42-unit senior housing apartment building known as Legacy Place, and 32-unit assisted-living building called Heritage Place.

The Society received permission from the state for a 30-bed skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility and ground was broken in June 2016.

Serenity Place's first two residents are through private insurance plans. An upcoming Department of Health inspection will have to be completed before the facility is able to accept Medicaid and short-term Medicare rehab residents.

In all, the St. Martin's campus, also the location of St. Elizabeth Seton Elementary School, is home to 130 residents, with 50 employees. More employees will be hired for Serenity Place as the number of residents grows.

The Society, which also operates a 39-bed facility in New Underwood, has applied for an additional 30 beds for Serenity Place which could be built as a new adjoining wing within two years.

The Rev. Herb Cleveland, offering a blessing and dedication ceremony Tuesday, said the Benedictine Sisters of St. Martin's would be pleased with the new facility already in place.

"Imagine this whole area to be soaked in the love of those sisters, holy ground, as it were," Cleveland said. "I'm just so happy to see the campus continuing to grow and this particular skilled nursing facility is glorious."