Cindy Wegner took over as McLean County Nursing Home administrator on Dec. 28. (Photo by Eric Stock/WJBC)
By Eric Stock
BLOOMINGTON – McLean County's new nursing home administrator is moving from a privately-run facility where she said the challenges are much the same.
Cindy Wenger of Normal said finances for the nursing home in Normal are heavily dependent on Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements while competing with the private sector.
"The different accountable care organizations makes it difficult to get the admissions we'd like to see for the facility, so we are just going to be working on changing formats so we can increase our census at the facility," Wegner said.
Wegner was an administrator as Heritage Manor in Normal for 12 years and worked there for 21 years. She said long term care is what she feels called to do.
"We all have grandparents and they are our most fragile generation and they deserve the utmost care and love we can offer them," Wegner said. "That is why I am in this line of work and that is why I went to McLean County."
Wegner started as McLean County Nursing Home administrator on Dec. 28. She replaced Jack Moody the county's facilities manager who held the post on an interim basis for more than a year.
Matt Reihle left the administrator post in 2013.
Danvers Y fined
The Danvers Y tavern which temporarily closed after one of its patrons was involved in a fatal drunk driving crash is in some trouble again, though the bar is under new ownership.
That fact seems to have significantly lessened the fine the Danvers Y would have faced. The county's Liquor Commission on Tuesday agreed to a $150 fine and an early closing time this Thursday.
A McLean County sheriff's deputy discovered the bar was open a half hour past its mandatory 1 a.m. close on Nov. 2, the night we turned the clocks back. A bar employee claimed they thought they could stay open another hour.
Liquor commissioner Catherine Metzger said the new owner, Drake Irwin, who bought the bar from his father, gets a fresh start.
"It's my understanding we have to look at this totally different if this was the previous owner," Metzger said. "I don't think you'd see this kind of fine."
Radley Monson of Bloomington is serving a seven-year prison sentence for drunk driving in the February 2012 crash that killed Nicholas Kaufmann, 21, of Bloomington.
Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].
