First-of-its-kind nursing home to open in Georgia

A little more than two years after breaking ground, the Bostick Nursing Center in Milledgeville is officially opening next week.

The center at 1700 Bostick Circle is the first of its kind in Georgia, according to a release. The nursing home will “house aged and infirmed former inmates who have served their terms, require health care treatment or supervision but have few options to meet these needs after leaving the correctional system,” the release said.

The grand opening will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday, preceded by a reception at 12:30 p.m.

Officials broke ground on the center in August 2014. It was announced at that time that the 280-bed facility, valued at more than $20 million, would create 225 jobs in Baldwin County.

In 2014, Atlanta-based CorrectHealth bought 16 acres of land, which included the former Bostick prison building, to develop the nursing home. CorrectHealth, which specializes in correctional health care, is in partnership with the Central State Hospital Local Redevelopment Authority.

“Our prisons have an ever-growing number of elderly inmates who are at or near the end of their sentences, and Bostick Nursing Center will fill a need,” CorrectLife owner and CEO Carlo Musso said in the statement. “This will benefit Georgia taxpayers who currently foot the bill for expensive health care treatments for the chronically ill in our prisons, and it will also provide good jobs for the highly trained health care workforce in Milledgeville.”

This story was originally published November 25, 2016 at 1:19 PM with the headline "First-of-its-kind nursing home to open in Georgia."