Hardin Hills Health Center Closing

Hardin Hills Health Center in Kenton will be closing.

The Hardin County Commissioners passed a resolution on Thursday closing  the facility no later than July 10.

Commissioner Roger Crowe talks about why that decision was made, “We’ve struggled with several issues at Hardin Hills over the years. We’ve struggled with census of residents, with the COVID situation, with financing, with staffing, with infrastructure of the building. The building was built in the 50’s. It was not built to be remodeled and upgraded, and our latest issue has been that the fire pump has been declared unreliable. We currently have a fire watch going on at the facility where there is one person dedicated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to doing nothing but walking the building, opening every door and looking for fires. That is an activity that’s mandated by the state when you don’t have a reliable sprinkler system.”

As for the residents, Crowe said, “Currently the residents and their families are receiving personal phone calls letting them know about the closure, and we’re going to have a meeting on Tuesday (April) the 16th for the families to answer questions and concerns that they might have, and our staff will assist the families in finding another facility for their resident to move to.”

He also talked about the plan for the employees, “We have developed a severance package for the ones willing to stay with us till the final resident has left the building. We don’t know exactly how long that will be, but it will be no later than July 10, so we are making an effort to take care of the staff, because we know this is a hardship on them as well as the residents.”

Crowe concluded that the decision to close Hardin Hills was a tough one to make, but in the end it had to be done, “As long as I have been a commissioner, which I’m in my eighth year, there has been discussion about Hardin Hills and the facility and specifically the building and how long we could maintain that, and it finally just came to a head this last couple of months.”

Again the facility will close no later than July 16.