What to cut: Nursing positions or a profit?
Posted by Kim on September 27th, 2007 / Print This Post
How decisions are made to cut staff:
DANVILLE – Vermilion Manor Nursing Home lost almost a million dollars last year, but a financial consultant thinks the county-owned facility can be profitable not only this year but also for at least the next four.Mike Harmon of Harmon and Associates in Danville told county board members Tuesday night that the key to making the 233-bed nursing home profitable would be reducing the largest expense – personnel costs – which constituted about 88 percent of the nursing home’s expenses last year.
For several years, the county has subsidized the nursing home with additional taxpayer dollars.
Taxpayers already support the nursing home with an annual property tax levy that generated about $650,000 for the facility last year.
Earlier this year, the county set up a payment plan by which the nursing home is paying back to the county the extra money it was given last year to cover its budget deficit.
It has already made seven monthly payments of about $24,000 toward the $880,000 debt.
The county hired Harmon at a cost of $4,000 to analyze the nursing home’s finances and determine how the facility could operate profitably in the future, continue to pay its debt to the county and not require additional funds from taxpayers.
Harmon compared Vermilion Manor’s nurse staffing hours per day to state and national averages.
Vermilion Manor’s were higher in every category, and Harmon said reducing that expense is key to making the facility profitable.
We have consultants coming into nursing homes and recommending nursing positions be cut, in order to cut a profit.
When this happens, we cannot call these places nursing homes- because the nursing isn’t happening as it should.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
That’s just scary. Over the summer they brought in consultants at my facility. We’ve not heard a thing about what came of that. I love how people jsut go by what other homes have for staffing too- this nurse hour rhetoric. The aides are the ones who spend the most time with the residents- nurses maybe 10 minutes a day as they watch them swallow meds…or change a dressing. The aides cannot keep up now as it is, the care is poor and we go home feeling like we didn’t do a good job. Yet the leaders and consultants tell us it is good enough to have less staff.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Fact is most nursing homes are operating right at the red line- they are always in debt and never reimbursed for the amount of money they require. So, to take away even more is just unethical. And dangerous. The polcats in DC and elsewhere don’t really care either. For all the rhetoric we hear nothing has changed in the 20 or so years the regulations have been in effect.
It’s really why people must look to alternatives to nursing homes AND assisted living homes.