Champaign County Administrator Rick Snider says the county nursing home is cooperating with an investigation into the death of a resident of the home. According to the News-Gazette, the county coroner and Illinois State Police are investigating the death of a 78-year-old woman who was discovered last weekend in the courtyard and may have been outside in high temperatures for as many as three hours.

The Champaign County Board is getting ready to hire the same firm to broker a potential sale of its troubled nursing home that brokered the sale of Vermilion County’s nursing home four years ago.  But efore any sale occurs, the county board is hiring a new management firm for the facility, one that specializes in turning around nursing homes with problems.

Faced with mounting costs and voter rejection of a tax increase, the Champaign County Board is looking for a broker for the possible sale of its nursing home to a private operator. They wouldn’t be the first county in central Illinois to decide that that running a nursing home was no longer viable for them. But there are some nearby counties that are running nursing homes with little or no financial trouble.

The Champaign County Board took a step Tuesday night towards a possible sale of the county nursing home, by voting to authorize their county administrator to seek a broker to facilitate the sale. County Board members in a committee-of-the-whole meeting as the Finance Committee voted 15 to 5 to authorize the issuing of a “Request for Information” or RFI, advertising for a broker to facilitate the sale or transfer of the financially strapped nursing home to a private owner.

The Champaign County Board was presented with financial projections Thursday night that show the Champaign County Nursing Home running out of money later this year — perhaps as soon as June.