Several years ago the Maine Legislature established a commission to investigate why nursing homes had closed in the towns of Calais, Lubec and Pittsfield. I was a member of this bipartisan effort.
What was discovered is that the meager increases provided for nursing home care for MaineCare clients by the Angus King and John Baldacci administrations had led to an industry on the verge of financial collapse. Nursing facilities were using profits from privately funded or Medicare clients to offset growing MaineCare losses to stay afloat. If they didn’t have many of the profit-making clients, they were doomed financially.
The commission had legislation passed that called for increasing MaineCare payments to actual expenditures every two years (instead of every five to eight years as had been the case) and for an annual cost-of-living increase to pay for higher food and supply costs and employee wages.
On July 1, 2014, Maine nursing homes received an increase for rebasing their payments to 2011 actual expenses. But because of a lack of funds, the increase only covered about 95 percent of 2011 expenses, with the balance to be made up as of July 1, 2015, with an inflation increase. The industry thanked Paul LePage for being the first governor to heed our cries for financial help in nearly 20 years.
Less than a year has passed since the first increase prompted by the study commission, and legislative leadership is already reducing the amount of LePage’s nursing home budget, which the governor put in per the commission’s recommendations. How quickly some people forget!
The public shake their heads when they read of nursing home horror stories about inadequate staffing and deplorable conditions. They don’t make the connection that it costs money to provide quality care.
If the public is going to sit back and let the Legislature undo what Democrats and Republicans together said needed to be done to keep more nursing homes from closing, then the horror stories and closings will continue.
Nursing home operators have asked for over 20 years to be paid break-even payments and cannot seem to get that. Meanwhile, grocery stores sell food to food stamp recipients at a fair profit as do the heating oil dealers to Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program clients. Maybe we should simply acknowledge that old, sick people don’t matter enough to our legislative leaders.
Actions speak louder than words. Legislators need to hear from their constituents on this.
Phil Cyr is the administrator of the Caribou Rehab and Nursing Center and has been a licensed nursing home administrator for 39 years.