Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 8, 1995 TAG: 9503080093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
City Manager Bob Herbert said Tuesday that he's recommending that City Council seek proposals for turning the city's decades-old nursing home in Botetourt County over to a private company.
Patients would be shifted to a new nursing home built and run by a private, for-profit company. The process would take as long as three years, assuming private companies are interested, Herbert said.
``Our challenge is that we have an outdated facility ... that needs to be replaced to provide quality care to the residents and continue to meet state requirements,'' Herbert said. ``In addition, we continue to subsidize the home with more and more local tax dollars each year.''
The proposal would save taxpayers money without costing patients more for their care, the city manager said.
The nursing home now serves 58 elderly people and has an annual budget of about $1.6 million, according to Administrator Robert Hyatt. The home accepts Medicaid as full coverage for cost of care, which means that no patient receives a bill. But because of state cutbacks in 1982, Medicaid's fixed per-patient payment covers only $1.16 million of the cost. The remainder is subsidized by city taxpayers, and costs are likely to grow.
The home currently operates close to or at capacity, Hyatt said.
The city would ensure that any company seeking to take over the business would accept Medicaid reimbursement. Since the company already would be in the nursing home business, economies of scale would allow it to operate the home at closer to the reimbursement figure. Herbert said three companies already have expressed interest in assuming the patients on those terms but that the proposal will be advertised to others.
The city also will seek hiring guarantees so about 50 nursing home employees could keep their full-and part-time jobs if they want them. However, it ultimately could mean some salary and benefit cuts for the workers, Herbert said.
The plan outlined Tuesday is the result of a six-month effort by an employee team studying who uses the nursing home, the cost of subsidizing it, and beds available locally at private locations.
Other options the panel considered involved building a new nursing home and looking at three management options: continuing to operate it, hiring a management company to run the facility, and forming a nonprofit corporation to manage it.
The aging, one-story brick building sits on 140 city-owned acres at Coyner Springs. The site also houses a city-owned juvenile detention home and a youth crisis intervention center.
The nursing facility was built in 1939 but wasn't operated as a home for the aged until 1958. At that time, it was used mostly by indigent elderly city residents who couldn't afford beds in the relatively few private nursing homes in the Roanoke area.
Since then, the city has seen a nursing home building boom. More than 2,038 nursing home beds are now available for elderly and infirm people in the Roanoke region, most of them without regard to patients' ability to pay, Herbert said.
If some council members' views are any indication, Herbert's proposal could sail through a council meeting on Monday. Council members were briefed on the plan during the last three weeks.
``We really should be getting out of the nursing home business,'' Councilman Jack Parrott said. ``We're popping $400,000-plus into that, but we're not providing any service that couldn't be provided by private industry.''
Councilwoman Elizabeth Bowles said council's priority will be ensuring patient care is not compromised.
``Our first concern is that something adequate is provided for patients that need that care,'' she said.
by CNB