Despite rumors to the contrary, Hillcrest Home is not in financial trouble.

In fact, said Jan May, the nursing home on Route 82 south of Geneseo is doing just fine.

May, of Kewanee, sits on the Henry County Board’s Hillcrest Home committee, and said she’s heard several rumors about the home’s current status. And they’re not true.

“We’re not selling,” she said. “We’re not closing. We’re just doing a little reorganizing.”

One of the rumors — that the home’s administrator has been fired — has an element of truth, May said. The administrator will be leaving that post on April 8, but she wasn’t fired; she resigned.

As for rumors of a financial crisis at Hillcrest, May said, “Our financial problems are minimal.”

She noted that Henry County owns about 300 acres of farmland. Money that land generates goes to support Hillcrest Home.

The biggest issue facing Hillcrest is staffing. There aren’t enough qualified people to handle the home’s full capacity of residents, May said.

“The need to find agency staff” has led Hillcrest to “cut the number of clients that we serve,” she said.

There has been a sign outside Hillcrest Home inviting people to apply for jobs there for more than a year, May said. It’s a problem nursing homes across the country have faced.

“We’d like to have the numbers (of residents) back up, obviously,” May said.

One reason for the difficulty in hiring qualified staff could be the home’s location.

May said the fact that Hillcrest is a 20-mile drive from Kewanee and other parts of Henry County might dissuade some qualified people from applying to work there.

She said the county board committee will be sending a letter to staff and patients explaining the situation at Hillcrest.