Dane County is among several Wisconsin counties diversifying its nursing home facilities to offer additional services, meet changing community demands, and avert the need for sale or closure, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Verona’s Badger Prairie Health Care Center, a $22.6 million facility that opened in 2011 to replace a former nursing home, will likely soon house a dementia crisis unit.
County officials said they are committed to retaining ownership of Badger Prairie and have “no plans or desire to close or sell” the facility. The 2025 annual county budget allocates $244,800 for a feasibility study to establish a dementia stabilization and care transition unit.
The county is seeking to create an eight-bed dementia unit licensed as a nursing home, which would allow on-site psychiatry and stays of roughly 90 days. It comes in response to growing county needs and as an alternative to hospitalization.
Badger Prairie’s current population is a mix of 110–115 residents with mental illness, behavioral challenges, or severe obesity.
