Nursing home set for closure

“It would be devastating to lose the nursing home,” said Audrey Hedman, whose husband, Cleave, has been a patient at Columbia View Care Center for ten months now.

“Before Cleave was strong enough to come to Cathlamet, he had to spend a couple of months at Northwest Continuum Care Center in Longview,” Hedman recalled. “That place felt like a hospital. Columbia View feels like home.”

Last week, however, the director of the Columbia View Care Center — Cathlamet’s only nursing home and one of the town’s largest employers — told residents and their families that the center will close Aug. 18

In a June 19 letter, Jeff Marshall, the president and CEO of Eagle Health Care, the care home’s parent company, announced the closure.

An estimated 20 residents of the home will be relocated over the next two months, and its 42 employees will be offered job-hunting assistance.

Marshall cited low state Medicaid payments as the cause for closure.

Residents and their families started to deal with the news this week.

“It’s a loss to patients,” Hedman asserted. “You can’t find this kind of care anywhere. Columbia View has people like Carol Wegdahl (nurse) who give 100 percent to their patients. She could have retired this spring but it was important to her to see us through; to make sure everyone ended up in the right place.

"We are still hoping for a miracle, thinking that maybe something will happen that will allow the nursing home to stay open.

“The employees are all so dedicated,” Hedman said. “They do such a nice job caring for folks. They really treat us like family there. People in this community know each other. Some of the people who care for Cleave were students he taught in school. That little nursing home means a lot to people.”

“We’ll probably have to move Cleave to Longview to be near our son. That way, I’ll have a place to stay the night when I need,” said Hedman.

Cathlamet Mayor George Wehrfitz said the facility’s closure would affect businesses in the region, as well as families who would have to travel farther to see their loved ones and employees facing longer commutes to work.

“It’s a blow to the community. They’re a major employer,” Wehrfritz said. “We have a pharmacy in town that will suffer. We have a clinic in town that will suffer. So this is a major setback.”

The closure will also affect the Cowlitz Family Health Center, which operates the clinic in Cathlamet.

"The 20 residents are all clinic patients," Dian Cooper, health center executive director said Tuesday. She added that a clinic physician serves as the care center's medical officer.

Cooper suspects that most of the patients will relocate in Cowlitz County, and some will become patients of the health center's clinics there, so there won't be a big financial impact to the center.

"However, the impact to the community will be huge," she said.

Wahkiakum County commissioners also expressed dismay that the care center would close because of the impact on residents and the loss of jobs and business for the community.

"It's too bad we didn't know about it sooner," said Commissioner Lisa Marsyla. "The community might have been able to rally around it like it did with the clinic."

--Eagle Publisher Rick Nelson contributed to this story