EDITORIAL: Nursing home aid

If you or a family member end up in a nursing home, you expect and deserve the best care available. But now that care is threatened by budget cuts being considered at the Capitol in St. Paul.

You need to know this because it could affect everything from the time it takes a nursing home worker to respond to a call light to the quality of food served in a home. And in many rural communities, it could mean that a nursing home — in many cases the town’s largest employer — could close.

For Burns Manor Nursing Home in Hutchinson, the cuts could mean no salary or benefit increases for workers. “It would affect our staff, the people who have difficult jobs,” said administrator Linda Krentz. “We’d be at risk for maintaining a high-quality staff.”

The cuts — totaling $32 million — are being proposed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, in his quest to fill a $938 million state budget gap. Of course, they’re not cuts at all if you talk to the governor’s people. His budget actually calls for increasing nursing home rates — but then it does some tricky math that eliminates funds for homes.

The people who live in nursing homes, and those who care for them, don’t deserve to become victims of this budget maneuvering. Republican and Democratic members of the state Legislature agree. They have their own solutions for nursing homes.

How nursing home care is paid
But before going any further, let’s all know where money for nursing homes comes from. Most of it comes from taxpayers, in the form of Medical Assistance, known as Medicaid in most other states. Medical Assistance gobbles up a large part of the state’s human services budget, so it’s a logical target for budget tighteners. But over the years, after being repeatedly targeted, there’s little left to cut. Nursing homes have been closing left and right in recent years simply because they can’t pay their help, which accounts for 70 percent of a typical home’s overall costs. More than 50 of Minnesota’s 440 nursing homes have closed since 2000.

Lawmakers — who must work with the governor to set the Medicaid reimbursement rate — have devised two alternatives:

• Rep. Marty Siefert, R-Marshall, has proposed spending $20.8 million to increase nursing home workers’ wages by 2.25 percent and support a 1.25 percent cost-of-living increase for other long-term care providers.

• A bipartisan group of long-term care supporters is backing a plan to increase nursing home aid by 3 percent, which would cost $30 million. To pay for it, they’re calling on Mr. Pawlenty to give up a proposed one-eighth-cent cut in the state sales tax.

We favor either option at this point. Cutting nursing home aid is not a viable option. The nursing home industry is one of the most highly regulated industries in the nation. It’s absurd for government to demand nursing homes to maintain staff levels and provide care according to stringent regulations, and not pay them enough to do it.

“Eventually, you can only cut so much,” Ms. Krentz told us, adding that the governor’s cuts would impact the future of senior care statewide.

Could it affect quality of care?
“We wouldn’t let that happen, but you’re really, really challenged when you can’t keep your salary and benefits within market,” she said.

Homes are hurting
A 2006 study by the Minneapolis accounting firm Larson Allen Weishair found that nearly one-third of Minnesota’s nursing homes had operating losses of 5 percent or more. Burns Manor was one of those homes. Fortunately, with help from a consultant, its situation has greatly improved during the past year. But not all homes can afford consultants, and many have already done everything possible to reduce expenses and increase revenue. It’s surprising that more of them have not closed.

Cutting their primary source of revenue — when they’re already working hard to keeping the wolf away from the door — makes no sense at all.

Editorials are written by Publisher Matt McMillan and Editor Doug Hanneman. They can be reached at mcmillan@hutchinsonleader.com, or hanneman@hutchinsonleader.com.