Morning Read: Watertown nursing home may close
The fate of nursing homes is a big deal in the North Country.
Facilities are struggling from Lake Placid to Watertown. Some counties, including Essex and Washington, are wrestling with whether to maintain their government-run senior homes.
Now the Watertown Daily Times is reporting that Mercy of Northern New York has filed a closure plan with the state Department of Health that would force nearly 180 patients to move — some as far away as Utica.
While Mercy has struggled financially for years, health care in the community would take a big hit if the facility closed, said State Sen. Darrel J. Aubertine, D-Cape Vincent.
He is urging the state to find another option.
“This is a difficult situation, but DOH has long been aware of its struggles and this community is working to address this problem to reach the best possible outcome for the health of the residents and the jobs this community needs,” he said. “I’m encouraged that Samaritan has stepped to the plate here to take receivership and am pressing the DOH to recognize that we need a bridge to a better solution here.”
Read the full article here.
“are wrestling with whether to maintain their government-run senior homes.”
Can’t wait till we have “government-run” health care!
Lest I be accused of a hit-and-run reply, I will expand my last comment.
This is an example of the inability of the government to run anything of this nature effectively.
Those who think that the government can run the nations health care system are wrong.
It will end up in the disaster that is facing the nursing homes in the area on the scale of the entire country.
Wow. Won’t that be great.
This is a sad development, considering the North Country has an aging population.
I think stand alone nursing homes are going to have trouble in the future in that we have an aging population but also people are healthier longer. Most seniors would much much prefer the variety of assisted living options which have increased greatly. Those that cannot pay for that option often are forced into nursing homes paying for them largely with medicare/medicaid and those payments won’t cover the costs.
I would like to remind everyone that these are very real, weakened, chronically ill people who must be frightened out of their wits about where they are going and who will be taking care of them. These poor souls may end up hundreds of miles from their home, families, friends and all that they know. They will land in a strange place with strange people, helpless to control their minute to minute circumstances.
The question is, are we willing to pay what it costs to run nursing homes? This is the huge question looming in front of us as we face an entire generation of baby-boomers moving into retirement years and the exponential increases in the need for, not only big increases in costs for chronic geriatric health care, but acute-needs full time, around the clock nursing home care for millions of new patients that will follow.
JDM: Apparently you haven’t heard of Canada, Sweden, among others who have run ‘things of this nature …” effectively for decades. I would turn the question and ask, in the totality, how can anyone reasonably argue that the private sector is capable of running these kinds of systems effectively, if you start with the premise that everyone has to be taken care of. Are you suggesting that we duplicate the private sector health care debacle and leave out a sixth of the population and have the most expensive system in the world with third world outcomes, because it has a nice, conservative, ideological ring to it?
We have to help.
The question is are old and possibly poorly run nursing homes the right model to pour money into? Certainly we should help those currently in this situation, but overall I don’t think the nursing home model is the way of the future.
Mervel, you said a mouthful. There is no way that our current model of eldercare is sustainable. We have much learning to do about this. At one time, eldercare was done in multi-generational households of extended family and neighbors. There was the county poor-house model for the poor and dispossessed. We then moved to the nursing home model. The average nursing home client lives for an average of 3 years from the time they enter the full-care institution. Obviously, many are living well beyond 3 years if you do the math of averages. The costs are ranging from 5 thousand per month and up to, who knows how much? Not many people can afford 60-100 thousand dollars per year and we can’t just put alzheimer’s patients, high-needs diabetics, cardiac patients etc, on park benches, but their care is frightfully expensive. We are not ready for this problem by a long shot.
John:
Apparently, I have heard of Canada, Sweden, et al. I want no part of it. I want no part of what our Congress voted for. I want it totally repealed, and a thoughtful answer to our health care issues brought into law.
I want reform. Real reform. Tort reform. Undoing of unfunded mandates.
Not a blank check to the democratic re-election committee.
I don’t think that offers much tangible help for the immediate situation. We do not have the luxury of calling a time out to sip tea and have genteel discussions about issues such as eldercare. It’s a crisis and it is now, this very minute, the next minute and hour and day etc. The people caught up in this are not abstractions that we can set aside while we have elevated discussions. This is a clear case where the solutions lie beyond the ability of the individual, immediate family, community etc. to solve on their own. That is exactly where government is supposed to get involved … helping people with those things that are beyond their ability to solve. To the Democratic party’s credit, at least they have been willing to step up to the plate instead of sitting back and saying no for political image-making purposes.
Why is this nursing home struggling?
We must find a compassionate immediate answer for these residents. However that probably does not include doing the same things that got this nursing home in the situation it is now in.