Clinton House Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center hosted its fall open house to celebrate the season and introduce the community to the upgrades the facility has received since planning began in 2020 and 2021.
The open house welcomed guests from various backgrounds into the doors of Clinton House, including leaders in Castle Healthcare, the operating company behind Clinton House. Shai Berdugo, CEO of Castle Healthcare, expressed that the open house was an opportunity for the community to experience the atmosphere of Clinton House firsthand as a future residence or workplace.
“We had physicians come here, we had people from local hospitals, we had people here from some of our competitors even, which is a welcome sight,” Berdugo said. “With open doors and open arms, we’re always happy to go ahead and speak to them and share with them because there’s so much that could be done for the sake of the community.”
The open house was held with the theme, “new season, new look” to celebrate the introduction of two specialty gyms and plans to expand the dementia care unit in the future. According to Berdugo, the project to introduce the specialty gyms into the facility was launched in 2020, but he stated that the pandemic caused a delay in the staff’s ability to host an open house to showcase the gyms.
“We are relaunching and introducing two new specialty gyms,” Berdugo said. “We are very fortunate to be serving the folks here in Frankfort. Nov. 1 will be our third year operating and consulting with this campus. We are very, very flattered and fortunate to be in this town.”
Berdugo seized the opportunity of Clinton House’s open house to share his vision with the community, commenting that the facility strives to create a hometown atmosphere for its residents to continue sharing in the community of Frankfort and Clinton County while accessing assisted living resources.
“We always respect our competitors, but we just have a different recipe,” Berdugo said. “We’re very proud of that recipe. We commit to the hometown care. We have people who are living here in Frankfort, residents that have grown and had households here in Frankfort. Even though we infuse a lot of new technology and a lot of things that are new in our industry, we never want to step away from that hometown charm.”
Berdugo stated that the project to introduce the specialty gyms and the expansion of the dementia care unit was not a project the staff strove to accomplish within the first few months of Clinton House’s opening, but as the facility begins to expand, the specialty gyms have been introduced and talks of the expansion have begun to gather more weight.
“We didn’t want to go ahead and do anything come day one,” Berdugo said. “We wanted to understand what the needs of the facility were and what the needs of the community were. We were able to see that there was a tremendous need for dementia and Alzheimer’s care. That’s something that we’ve doubled down on.”
Berdugo commented that Clinton House is known for its short-term, long-term and respite care within the Frankfort community, but he continued to express that the facility has begun to gain a reputation as a positive experience for dementia and Alzheimer’s care, which he intends to look toward expanding in the future.
“We do have future talks potentially in 2024 to expand that unit,” Berdugo said. “Today, it’s a 34-bed dementia unit, which is almost 100% full. That speaks to need of the community.”
Clinton House will host a trunk-or-treat tonight, Oct. 30, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 809 W. Freeman St. in Frankfort for the community to enjoy.