Cutting the tape — Ridgecrest Executive Director Josh Wagoner, with scissors, flanked by Drs. Thomas Corbyons, left, and Bhupendra Patel, right, is joined by employees and members of the DeLand Area Chamber of Commerce as he cuts a ribbon to officially mark the 12th anniversary of the opening of Ridgecrest Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in DeLand.BEACON PHOTO/MARSHA MCLAUGHLIN
In 2003, Greystone Health Network bought a nursing home in DeLand that had sat empty for about five years. After renovations, Ridgecrest Nursing & Rehabilitation Center opened for business the following year, at 1200 N. Stone St. on the north side of DeLand.
A dozen years later, Greystone officials marked the anniversary of its existence Oct. 27 with a ribbon-cutting in conjunction with the DeLand Area Chamber of Commerce & Orange City Alliance.
“A lot of the staff here has been here many, many years.” said Josh Wagoner, Greystone’s executive director. “We have more than 200 on staff full- and part-time, including nurses, CNAs, dietary cooks, and everything in between.”
Wagoner has been the administrator at Ridgecrest for a little more than a year; he transferred from Carlton Shores Health & Rehab, a Greystone facility in Daytona Beach. He has been with the company for four years.
Greystone, headquartered in Tampa, has two other facilities in Volusia County: Villa Health & Rehab Center on the south side of DeLand, and The Gardens Health & Rehab in Daytona Beach.
In all, the company has 26 facilities (including the four in Volusia County) in 20 Florida cities and another 11 facilities in nine Ohio cities, according to the company’s website.
The 150-bed Ridgecrest, as its name implies, provides long-term skilled nursing care and a full complement of rehabilitation services.
And like most health care facilities nowadays, Ridgecrest is becoming more of an electronic community, Wagoner said. Medicine dispensing, medical records, and laboratory results are all electronic. Staff, either at work or at home, can get educational courses online through the “Greystone Healthcare Academy.”
“We’re trying to become more efficient and enhance our skills,” Wagoner said. “The landscape of health care is changing, and we need to change with it.”
Ridgecrest also is beefing up its memory-care services. Recently, a nurse and a handful of CNAs attended a certified dementia-practitioners program to try to fill that need better, Wagoner said.
“We’ve got to get the staff educated first, so we can make it better than what we currently have,” he said. “That’s our goal.”
The main, two-story Ridgecrest building was constructed in 1982, according to the Volusia County Property Appraiser’s Office. It currently holds 98 skilled-nursing beds.
In 1993, a previous operator added a building to hold a conference room, a staff locker room, public restrooms, and kitchen facilities. Also built that year was a wing for the rehab facilities and rooms for up to 52 shorter-stay patients.
- Joe Crews, joe@beacononlinenews.com
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