TO:

Hon. Terry Branstad

Charles Palmer

State Senator Steve Sodders

State Rep. Dean Fisher

Dear leaders:

Attached please find a Des Moines Register May 3, 2014, news story concerning the projection of a nurse shortage for Iowa.

In summary, it foresees a shortage of nurses in Iowa by the year 2020.

(The entire article may be found at: www.desmoinesregister.com/story/life/living-well/2014/05/04/nurse-shortage-education-retention-iowa-salute/8584153/ A copy of the article may also be read at the Chronicle Office, 220 W. 3rd, Tama.)

It’s time to get going on future use of the Iowa Juvenile Home / State Training School for Girls campus in Toledo. Governor Branstad has said there is a local committee working on this. We haven’t heard from them.

You are urged to give some consideration to conversion of this property as a primary avenue to address this upcoming problem of an anticipated shortage of those in the nursing profession in Iowa.

Look what the IJH campus and Toledo and Tama area have to offer:

It currently is not in use , and as you are aware, there has been more than $20 million in infrastructure improvements made over the past few years.

It affords dormitory, educational and recreational space in a truly central location which can serve all of Iowa: Toledo is about a one-hour drive from Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Waterloo-Cedar Falls and Ames. Also close by are hospitals in Vinton, Marengo, Newton, Grundy Center, Marshalltown, Grinnell and Eldora.

The Toledo-Tama area currently is served by four clinics- MercyCare-Tama; Deer Creek Health Center (Grinnell Regional Hospital); Central Iowa Healthcare Clinic; plans to build a new $2 million McFarland Clinic in Toledo announced; and Meskwaki Health Services on the Settlement.

The new $45 million Phase I of Central Iowa Healthcare has been completed just 20 minutes away on the U.S. 30 Expressway.

The Iowa Veterans Home is similarly right down the road in Marshalltown – the model for state-care for veterans in the U.S.

There are, of course, a number of long-term care facilities in Tama County (five) and many more in surrounding counties as well as across Iowa.

Would not many of these existing medical care locations welcome nurses in-training who could be easily accessed from their central school in Toledo?

In addition, the Pheasant Ridge Care Facility (former Tama County Care Facility built in 1979) is soon to be vacant and could prove to be of additional use as an education-training facility.

The Iowa Juvenile Home / State Training School for Girls campus could well put Iowa in the forefront of addressing the critical need for nurses in the future.

-J. Speer