Some misinformed people compare the Wyoming Retirement Center in Basin to a retirement community in Arizona or Florida where residents play shuffleboard and golf and get together for happy hours.

However, the Retirement Center at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains is a nursing home with around-the-clock nursing care.

It serves Wyoming's most ill residents and offers care to those who have conditions that are too difficult to take care of at home or in other facilities.

Anita Cox-Mills, administrator of the state-run nursing home, will tell you there is a lot in a name.

"People don't realize what we are and what we do," Cox-Mills said about the misleading name the facility has had since 1985.

As part of the facility's campaign to revamp its image and change its philosophy, Cox-Mills wants to change the name to Wyoming Health Care and Rehabilitation.

This is the perfect name, Cox-Mills said, because sometimes people come to the facility to rehabilitate themselves, while others come to stay.

Some of the facilities have already changed their names to more accurately represent their missions.

The Veterans' Home of Wyoming in Buffalo used to be called the Wyoming Soldiers and Sailors Home. Superintendent Jack Tarter changed the name in the 1980s.

"I wanted to include all veterans from all services," said Tarter, who was in the Air Force. "Plus, 'soldiers' and 'sailors' are old terms."

The facility is home to veterans of all types as well as their families.

When the Wyoming State Training School in Lander opened in 1912, it was called the Wyoming State School for Defectives. The name was changed to the Training School in 1921.

The facility provides care and therapies for about 115 people with developmental disabilities or acquired brain injuries.

Superintendent Diane Baird-Hudson thinks the name Training School gives the wrong impression about the facility and needs to be changed.

"We don't do training, and we are not a school," Baird-Hudson said.

Family members of residents have used the words "derogatory" or "negative" to describe the images the name evokes.

Jane Vander Weyden of Dubois told the Casper Star-Tribune in May that she thought juvenile delinquents lived in the facility. After talking with people, she learned what services the facility offered, and it turned out to be the perfect place for her 71-year-old brother, who has cerebral palsy and other medical conditions.

A bill that would change the name of the Training School to the Wyoming Disability Resource Center may be considered by the Legislature in 2008. The Legislature's Select Committee on Developmental Programs chose the name.

Baird-Hudson and her colleagues wanted to change the name to the Wyoming Therapeutic Resource Center. She is happy the name may be updated, though.

"People still struggle with the stigma of disability," Baird-Hudson said.

A bill to change the name failed during the 2007 Legislature.

Baird-Hudson said the name change failed because people do not understand what the facility does or the impact a name has on the public's perception of the state's health care facilities.