Abandoned Nursing Home in Illinois: Wheelchair Room, Showers and a Fridge Note

This one closed in 2016, and the power no longer works. I heard it was a nursing school, a place where nurses practice, but the first rooms just looked like a nursing center to me.

The location stays off this page. I think it ends up demolished.

What we found

The entrance leads to a small lobby and an office. There are a few dressers, a TV stand and a mattress. I read a 2016 date off something in one of the rooms. Down a hallway we hadn’t explored yet there was a staff schedule for the workers, plus straws, cups and some Cheerios. I also found a really cool looking doll.

The refrigerator has a note on it saying that anything put inside needs a name and a date, starting Monday, or it will be thrown out. I opened it to see if it had been thrown out. I should not have opened it.

Behind a blocked off section I found the showers, and a bath. I didn’t expect to see that here. There was clothing around, and a laundry room.

The kitchen has a mixer and equipment for heating up sauces, and the mugs were really colorful. This place is way bigger than I thought it was. The dining room was next, with tables and mismatched chairs under a blue wall.

At the dining room I stopped and said I didn’t think this was a nursing school. I thought it was a nursing home that might have been used for nursing school training too. It looked like a little mini hospital. There were walkers, dialysis supplies and boxes of fluid, and I found oxygen tanks, which you don’t see too often.

Then came the wheelchair room. There were a lot of wheelchairs, and I have no idea what all the pads were for. I also found what I think was a pill splitter, a lot of batteries, and lots of keys.

Why places like this end up empty

I don’t know why this one closed, but Illinois nursing homes have been closing for money reasons for years. A 2019 report covered by Capitol News Illinois counted 20 skilled care nursing homes that had closed for financial reasons since March 2014. That same report ranked the state 49th in the country for Medicaid reimbursement rates. It said homes lost about $15,000 a year, or roughly $41 a day, on each resident paid for by Medicaid.

The report blamed rates that were set from old cost data, a shrinking state share of funding, and a statewide shortage of workers. Illinois also had the lowest average direct care hours per patient day in the country. One closure in the story displaced more than 60 residents and wiped out 75 jobs, and another home had been open for more than 100 years.

When a home like that closes, the building usually has to be emptied fast. Here the beds, the wheelchairs and the walkers stayed, and so did the note on the fridge.