Elderwood owners expanding with Brockport acquisition

By Tracey Drury for Buffalo Business First — Elderwood’s owners have announced a new deal to purchase a 120-bed nursing home in Brockport.

Post Acute Partners, which operates 16 nursing home and senior living sites in Western New York, will acquire the nonprofit Lakeside Beikirch Care Center, a freestanding, facility offering skilled nursing and short-term rehabilitation.

“It’s a nicely constructed, beautifully laid out facility with an excellent labor force and a strong community presence,” said Warren Cole, co-owner of Post Acute Partners. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 1944, the nonprofit Lakeside Beikirch Care Center provides skilled nursing and short-term rehabilitation. The nursing home was part of the Lakeside Health System which closed the adjacent Lakeside Memorial Hospital in April 2013 after several years of financial distress. Later that summer, most of the Lakeside system’s assets were acquired by the University of Rochester Medical Center and transferred onto Strong Memorial Hospital’s license.

The nursing home operation remained a separate nonprofit corporation, reporting revenue of $10.8 million in 2013, the most recent year for which federal tax data was available. Operations appear stable at the site, though there were slight deficits in 2012 and 2013 of $194,210 and $421,137, respectively after several years of surplus.

Patricia Hayles, LBCC chairperson of the non-for-profit board governing the facility, said health reforms have made it increasingly difficult for an independent facility that isn’t part of a larger heath-care system to sustain itself in the long term. Those changes affected how the board best positioned LBCC for the future.

“We had two goals: keeping the stability of our residents, families and staff at the center of our decision-making, and identifying a buyer who would provide the LBCC’s same level and quality of care of post acute services to the Brockport community well into the future,” said Hayles.

Unlike the hospital operation, Cole said the nursing facility is not distressed, which made the deal especially appealing.

“It’s a single asset for a non-for-profit, and many nonprofits are realizing they can’t really make it on their own in today’s world,” he said. “It’s the only asset they have and it just doesn’t make sense for them to continue to own it. They felt they were selling to a good provider that will continue to provide services to their community in a good way and that met their objective.”

The site represents the first facility for the company in Monroe County, and geographically links the company’s 16 sites in Western New York and two in the Syracuse. All together, the company has 26 facilities in New York, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Deals for another 15 acquisitions are currently pending. Operations are now based in Williamsville, but plans are underway to move to new offices in downtown Buffalo.

“We’re filling in with this one and others pending in Rochester, so we’re looking to be everywhere in Upstate New York — urban, rural, east, west,” Cole said. “We want to be the main post-acute provider in Upstate New York in multiple levels of care.”
Post Acute entered the upstate New York nursing home industry in 2013 with the $141 million acquisition of 19 Elderwood properties. It has since added services as well as new sites in Hornell, with a second deal pending in Lake Placid.

Closer to home, the company is also in talks to buy the skilled nursing unit at TLC Health System’s Lake Shore Health Care Center in Irving.

Tracey Drury covers health/medical, nonprofits and insurance.

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