Essex County still owns Horace Nye Nursing Home, for the moment
Senior residents at Horace Nye listening to a debate over the future of their nursing home in 2012. NCPR file Photo: Brian Mann
Happy New Year! And man is it a cold one so far, with current temps in our area ranging from -12 in Canton all the way up to a balmy 2 above in North Creek . But the news marches on, chattering teeth or no.
In the news today, the Plattsburgh (temp: -11) Press Republican is reporting that, for the moment, Essex County is continuing to have possession of the Horace Nye Nursing Home, in Elizabethtown (-8), which it had planned to hand off to the private company Specialty Care of the Bronx on Jan. 1.
The decision to privatize the nursing home was controversial and the discussion contentious, but Essex County supervisors voted in June of 2012 to sell Horace Nye to that company for just over $4 million. The transfer’s been delayed, the paper reports, because the company has created to local corporations to administer the home and associated real estate, and they need to be added to the agreement Specialty Care of the Bronx made with the county. County Manager Daniel Palmer told the paper that it looks like the transfer will take place around Jan. 31.
E.J. Noble nurses protest the planned dissolution of the hospital in Sept., 2013. NCPR file photo: Sarah Harris
In a related story, E.J. Noble Hospital of Gouverneur (-9) is now Gouverneur Hospital. The changover took place on Jan. 1, and spokesperson Rebecca J. Faber said the transition would be “seamless:” “Patient care will not be interrupted. Patients should notice no change…The difference people will experience will be in the new hospital’s and system’s focus on quality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.”
Employees commemorated the change with a time capsule and a small private ceremony. Some items associated with the hospital are going to the Gouverneur Museum.
Some employees of E.J. Noble won’t remain at the new Gouverneur Hospital; you may remember that E.J. Noble Hospital was closed by the state for a period of time in 2012 after the state Health Department found problems in its lab, and made the decision to dissolve and join with Canton-Potsdam Hospital in a two-hospital system.
I am still waiting for someone on the Essex County board to explain how a private company will be able to “make money” where the county could not. After all, the private company will have to pay property and income taxes where the county did not.
The only answer I see is (1) reduction in costs, by cutting back on care or breaking union contracts, or (2) raising the charge to residents, most of whom are Medicaid, not private pay. Raising the charge on Medicaid patients can’t be done except by better management of reimbursement, which the county apparently did not look into. Improving reimbursement is a well-established method of increasing the profitability of nursing homes.
As far as Essex “losing $2 million a year” I don’t count as loss the money required to be spent on the care of the helpless elderly – it’s part of the dues we owe our elders in a well-run country.