March 17, 2022 — As of last week, Sherwood Oaks, the only nursing home on the coast, is under new ownership. The buyers, Lucy Xie and Ronald Baldwin, are also the owners of two licensed nursing homes in Hayward, Serenethos Care Center and Saint Anthony Care Center.
Although Sherwood Oaks has a license for almost 80 beds, over the past year, the pandemic, a million and a half dollars’ worth of deferred building maintenance, and a national shortage of nurses caught up to it. The facility now has enough staff to care for 32 residents.
In the middle of December, Dr. William Miller, the Chief of Staff at Adventist Health Mendocino Coast, laid out three levels of crisis and told the board of the Mendocino Coast Healthcare District that without emergency staffing, the facility could close by the first of the year.
New owner Lucy Xie, who is also an RN, said she found out about Sherwood Oaks by reading the Miller Report, Dr. Miller’s regular column on local healthcare. She and her husband talked to some people they knew in the industry, took a trip to Fort Bragg, and decided within just three days to purchase the nursing home. Earlier this week, she said she had already addressed procedural deficiencies at the facility and is planning to upgrade the kitchen as the first of many projects to improve the building. She’s confident that she’ll have the building’s deferred maintenance projects completed by the end of the year.
She added she faced similar challenges when she took over the other two nursing homes, but now, with a national shortage of nurses, the biggest hurdle will be hiring staff.
