STANWOOD — A service organization and senior community with a century-long legacy is in the midst of change.
Josephine Caring Community, formerly Josephine Sunset Home, has a new name and a plan to build a new center for its busy rehabilitation program.
The organization already has directed $2 million toward updates at the existing center in downtown Stanwood. Over the past two years, the nonprofit has put in new furniture, fixtures and equipment and upgraded to electronic medical record keeping, Josephine’s CEO Terry Robertson said.
That’s the last major investment expected for the downtown location. Moving forward, the plan is to build and expand onto properties on higher ground in Stanwood and in Smokey Point. Josephine’s longtime location sits in a floodplain and the goal is to build the new rehabilitation center out of the reach of major floods, Robertson said.
Josephine is a service organization under the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Norwegian immigrant John Hals paid for the construction of the Josephine Old People’s Home in 1908. It was the community’s first nursing home, built with the fortune Hals had acquired running sawmills.
Many locals still think of Josephine as an old people’s home, Robertson said, but the organization does more than house seniors. Along with long-term and memory care and the assisted living apartments, the center offers childcare, early education and a fast-growing transitional rehabilitation program.
“All of those four lines of business have very, very different customers,” Robertson said.
Like its parent organization, Josephine’s rehabilitation program recently got a new name: Saratoga Transitional Rehab. It provides people who are leaving the hospital after a surgery or lengthy stay the chance to heal and retrain their bodies before going home. Services include cardiac and stroke recovery and physical, occupational and speech and swallowing therapy.
The rehabilitation program started nine years ago with about four or five patients each day. Now, there usually are 35 daily patients, and Robertson anticipates that things will continue to become busier.
Josephine owns nine acres in Smokey Point near Lakewood Crossing and additional acreage on the east side of Stanwood, uphill from the floodplain.
Plans are being drawn to build a new center dedicated completely to Saratoga Transitional Rehab on one of those properties. A site should be selected and initial plans for the building drawn by the end of the year, Robertson said.
Josephine is the city’s second largest employer, with more than 300 people working there.
The nonprofit provides rehabilitation and longterm care for roughly 700 people each year. The transitional rehabilitation program is its busiest service. The increase in patients is the biggest change Robertson has seen at Josephine in his eight years with the organization.
“Everybody thinks we’re just a nursing home but we’re so much more than that,” he said. “This is a place to come get well, not a place to come and live the rest of your days.”
For more information about Josephine, call 360-629-2126 or email terry.r@josephinenet.com.
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com.
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