With too many empty beds and too many lingering memories of its days as the county poor farm, Sunny Hill Nursing Home’s image needs a little polishing, Will County officials say.
Administrators of the 300-bed home are trying to make the 30-year-old facility seem more cutting-edge than last resort. Although its image may be of an antique convalescent home, county officials say Sunny Hill actually is a top-notch skilled rehabilitation facility with an $11 million annual budget.
“People were still thinking of Sunny Hill as an old-folks type home,” Administrator Mickie Stanley said. “We were finding that even county employees didn’t realize what we have to offer.”
The low-slung brick complex is hidden away on Joliet’s southeast side. Too many of the people who might benefit from the facility don’t even know it’s there, said Stanley, who has run the nursing home for five years.
With the blessing of county officials who are worried about the nursing home’s bottom line –the budget could be more than $1 million in the red this year–Stanley has hired an advertising consultant.
For-profit nursing homes have been sending marketing specialists into area hospitals for years to develop a rapport with social workers, and Stanley said she is now assigning a Sunny Hill nurse to do the same thing. Hospital officials said the move is long overdue and should help Sunny Hill became a more familiar resource for social workers who are trying to help families find the facility that best suits their needs.
And in what county officials hope will be a savvy public relations move, Sunny Hill may get a name change.
Fearing that “nursing home” is too old-fashioned a term to convey what Sunny Hill has to offer, County Board members plan to change the name to Sunny Hill Skilled Rehabilitation Center. That name conveys higher levels of care, which most people don’t expect from the county-run home, Stanley said.
She said Sunny Hill offers respiratory therapy seven days a week; speech, physical and occupational therapies; post-radiation and chemotherapy care; hospice care; and several other types of skilled care.
Stanley also has hired a consultant, Centerpoint Technologies of New Lenox, to create brochures and come up with strategies for improving Sunny Hill’s reputation.
Consultant BrienMcHugh brought his own perceptions to the job.
“I’m a lifelong Joliet resident, and when you think of Sunny Hill, you think of the poor-people’s home,” McHugh said. “It’s anything but that. The name change is part of changing that–to stress what they can do.”
The first thing McHugh was asked to do was find a way to reach the county’s 1,700 employees, who administrators believe remain a largely untapped client base. The brochure he designed was stuffed into payenvelopes last week.
Although Sunny Hill is among the top five nursing homes to which Silver Cross Hospital refers patients, hospital spokeswoman Tracy Simons said that the county nursing home has been hurt in the past by being too passive.
