SALISBURY – While the future of a county-owned nursing home remains uncertain, officials this week assured community members they would work toward a solution that preserves jobs and services.
On Tuesday, members of the community came before the Wicomico County Council once again to make their case for keeping the Wicomico Nursing Home under county ownership.
In December, the council agreed to loan the facility $489,320 to sustain operations through fiscal year 2019 after learning low occupancy, personnel costs and write offs of bad debt had affected the nursing home’s bottom line.
In doing so, county officials also agreed to explore capital improvements, personnel changes and privatization. By way of background, the county took ownership of the nursing home in 1972 when the nonprofit corporation charged with operating the facility ran into financial difficulty.
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28 comments:
They must be doing something right. It's the best nursing home around.
Seems County Council doesn't get the concept of history repeating itself
Private - went belly up
County bought it - went belly up
Now considering selling it off to a private entity who is more concerned over profit?
Clean up your management
Seems the fact is they don't want to pay to have experienced people running the place.
When you interview for a job and you know more than your newly hired boss, you know there are internal issues.
I had a friend in there and personally experienced some horrible behavior of their staff. After a stroke she had difficulty communicating and instead of staff working on understanding her they mocked her in front of us while we were in the room with her.
A clear case of $$ over people.
If you have no money you may as well go home and curl up in a ball and die because no one will give a $hit about you. Your social value is dependent on your bank account.
Where is their endowment fund? They should be running off the proceeds of their invested endowment fund
Mismanaged on all levels?
Once again the people in the middle get shafted. Rich people get private care at home. Poor people get care for free. Seniors on fixed income still have taxes taken out of social security and pay for health care. When they can no longer function at home, they take every penny you have , then store you in a shared box size room. Lets stop taking seniors taxes so they can get help at home before nursing home time.
Cannon is full of it. He knows if he sells it to a private company he has no control over any issues anymore. Look at the privatized ones already. Under staffed and poor care only because they can't keep help enough due to low wages and poor benefits, to take care of the patients they have. Thats what has made the difference at Wicomico.
The County has had this for over 40 years. It should have been privatized a long time ago.
I get nothing but Great Reports on the Wicomico Nursing Home. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that will happen anywhere. Wicomico is the best in our area. The nurses seem to be very capable and caring. Let's do what we can to keep it up and running, as we need it.
There's another issue here that no one is paying attention to. This sort of care costs money. one of the largest costs is labor. this cost is paid from the reimbursements from Medicaid/medicare- which are shrinking or staying stagnant, as more and more regulation and technology is also being heaped on these types of centers (I work for one- not Wicomico). Quality of care and profitability is bound to go down as more resources are required but not given. Please contact your congressional reps to help all types of these facilities to increase reimbursement, Which will allow centers such as this to hire more and better help to take better care of our Seniors.
I was there briefly, Thank GOD! it was a horrifying
experience. Stealing from people, not doing their
jobs , getting rx on time, not helping patients when
it was needed.
There might be other sections where the help is good, but
where I was, it was terrible. A friend of mine on the
same wing, terrible for them too.'
God help us all if this is considered the Best!!!
do you honestly think the patient is going to tell you the
truth about their care when they have to live there. Hell No,
Not if they want to get fed and cared for they're not!!!
Anonymous said...
Seems County Council doesn't get the concept of history repeating itself
Private - went belly up
County bought it - went belly up
Now considering selling it off to a private entity who is more concerned over profit?
Clean up your management
Seems the fact is they don't want to pay to have experienced people running the place.
When you interview for a job and you know more than your newly hired boss, you know there are internal issues.
I had a friend in there and personally experienced some horrible behavior of their staff. After a stroke she had difficulty communicating and instead of staff working on understanding her they mocked her in front of us while we were in the room with her.
A clear case of $$ over people.
If you have no money you may as well go home and curl up in a ball and die because no one will give a $hit about you. Your social value is dependent on your bank account.
Where is their endowment fund? They should be running off the proceeds of their invested endowment fund
Mismanaged on all levels?
January 8, 2019 at 9:20 AM
You are wrong. It's not the County Council, it's the County Executive. Pay Attention!
Anonymous said...
The County has had this for over 40 years. It should have been privatized a long time ago.
January 8, 2019 at 9:58 AM
It doesn't matter how long they have had it. That isn't he issue. The issue is that it is the best nursing home in the county, but it is under piss poor management.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
There's another issue here that no one is paying attention to. This sort of care costs money. one of the largest costs is labor. this cost is paid from the reimbursements from Medicaid/medicare- which are shrinking or staying stagnant, as more and more regulation and technology is also being heaped on these types of centers (I work for one- not Wicomico). Quality of care and profitability is bound to go down as more resources are required but not given. Please contact your congressional reps to help all types of these facilities to increase reimbursement, Which will allow centers such as this to hire more and better help to take better care of our Seniors.
January 8, 2019 at 12:16 PM
It's called poor management. Get new leadership in there that knows how to run a nursing facility.
The County could lease it.
January 8, 2019 at 12:16 PM
The majority of the labor is barely making over minimum wage.
I have no doubt your "for profit" center wants more.
Thank you for openly proving our point about "for profit" facilities
Here's another one of your dirty little secrets. For profit centers are only mandated to take on a very few Medicaid patients. The ratio is very low.
An example being Lakeside, only had a couple. The rest were well paying guests.
Medicaid patients are more often than not sitting on a waiting list and not able to get into your facility
I have even more dirt on their past billing practices but we can leave that conversation for another time.
Always crying poor.
Anonymous said...
The County could lease it.
January 8, 2019 at 2:16 PM
No, all the county has to do is hire a Director who knows how to operate this kind of facility and find ways to get paid from Medicare/Medicaid as well as find other ways to make a profit such as Physical Therapy. Every Nursing home on the Eastern Shore is offering Physical Therapy except Wicomico. That idiot running the place should have never been hired.
Maybe the nursing school could partly staff it to provide OJT and there could be an opportunity for a public/private partnership where great care would be a point of pride.
Maybe the nursing school could partly staff it to provide OJT and there could be an opportunity for a public/private partnership where great care would be a point of pride.
I want to add to the positive comments on the Wicomico Nursing Home. Every time I've been in there I have encountered capable and friendly staff. The atmosphere is pleasant, the place is clean -- I repeat -- the place is clean with no foul smell in the air. I say this because that is NOT the case with another nursing home I visit regularly in the area. Yes, Wicomico is the best around.
January 8, 2019 at 2:09 PM HEY STUPID . LEARN TO READ
When did Cannon become executive? because he is quoted in the articled
Council President John Cannon said he recognized residents’ concerns.
“The council is very much aware of the community’s concerns on the nursing home,” he said, “and we want to make sure that we do tread very lightly as we review this.”
Cannon gave his reasons for withholding information on the Wicomico Nursing Home.
So maybe you can elaborate how this is all Culvers fault when the COUNCIL knew about what was going on and intentionally withheld information from the public???
Which idiot are you referring to? The administrator who ran the place for over 48 years with no county intervention, the county did not have an interest in running the place. There was no need to. The nursing home was doing fine until Rick Politt forced the nursing home to pay off the mortage because he planned on selling the place to Dr Rifkin if he got re-elected. The reason the nursing home had a mortage was because the county came in and took the nursing home revenue when they built the shore birds stadium. that was a large chunk of money.
Or are you talking about the idiot who was trained by the previous administrator for about 4 years, who worked at the nursing home for over 12 years. She just ran the place for a little over a year and left due to heath issues.
Or are you talking about the current acting administrator who has only been doing the job for less then two weeks.
The issues the nursing home has been having did not start over night. It started when the ACA started and has been going down hill since.
The finical issues the nursing home is having can be turned around once the census is up. Yes the nursing home does need to be upgraded. It is still a good place to work and live. The nursing home has a lot more positive aspects than negative.
There are no idiots there. There are caring people who try to take care of their residents and build loving bonds with the residents and their families.
You cant please everyone all the time, but you can please them most of the time.
The p
Low occupancy....so why keep it open? This is not a county financed welfare program for people that couldn't otherwise find a job. ClOSE IT!
Let me say this, my father-in-law just passed away recently. He had stayed at the Wicomico County Nursing Home for several months. My father-in-law could be very contrary at times. So when he got sick, instead of taking care of him, the staff basically left him to die. When he was finally taken to the hospital he had to under go several hours of surgery to remove boils, both internal and external, that the operating doctor said had to be noticed by the staff and the attending physician, Dr. Nateson because this had happened over a period of several weeks, not days. To those who don't know, Dr. Nateson has all of the primary care at all nursing homes in Wicomico County. You never know if your loved one is seeing a Dr. or assistant or possibly the office secretary. It is estimated that Dr.Nateson and crew rake in 3-4 million a year on these so called services. The Maryland Board of Physicians has been contacted about both Dr. Nateson and the staff at the Wicomico County Nursing Home. If your loved one is a little hard to deal with guess what, they don't deal with them, they just let them lay there and suffer. My father in law died 2 weeks after surgery. He refused to go back to the nursing home once he was told of the amount of rehabilitation time and pain that he was looking at to recover from this absolute neglect. He declined care and said he would prefer to die than go back to the nursing home. So he was sent to hospice, where people do care thank God. The people at the Wicomico County Nursing Home will look you straight in the eye and lie to you. Could my father in law be a pain? Absolutely. Is dealing with many types of patients with illness and personalities what this staff is supposedly trained to do? Absolutely. The Wicomico County Nursing Home is a nightmare. A Cuckoo's nest, with Dr., not nurse, Ratchett leading the sadistic way. If you have a loved one there you had better keep a close eye on the care. We did and the neglect was there anyway.
January 9, 2019 at 7:52 PM I am doubting a portion of your commentary because the supposed administrator I met was barely 30 so there is no way she had worked there 12 years and trained for 4. I am not sure who you are speaking of but the one I met was not old enough to have the experience necessary to run the place.
When I interviewed for a position in accounting my supposed boss was barely 25, clueless and had just started. Seems to be a frequent turn over in staff there
And just as January 13, 2019 at 9:12 AM said, who ever the doctor was that hoodwinked my friends family into permanently forcing her into a life at this home, he must have gotten some financial gain from it. Even the nurses stated that she didn't belong there. And the floor staff treated her with disregard.
Happily my friend is living elsewhere now.
I'm not advocating for Nateson, but you compeltely discreted the entire post with the "estimated" $3 to $4 million statement. Any sane person would know that's complete nonsense.
This area is plagued with people taking advantage of the old. My friends mom was abused by Doris Renshaw at Golden Gardens. She was stealing her meds too and selling them. Those people need to rot in hell. Thank god she was caught and turned in to authorities.
My mother was there for 3 1/2 years. The lady that ran the place for many, many years was worthless and nasty. The Director of Nursing was incompetent and clearly paid no attention to what was going on with patients. At the time, there were some very good nurses and aides. Almost every one of them was fired. Those that needed to be fired were not. I was there nightly, minus a few nights of bad weather or illness. My mother's roommate was treated terribly - she could not feed herself yet no one helped her. We did. She would cry out for help if she was in pain, etc., yet it was rare that anyone responded unless we went and got someone. On two separate occasions I had reason to question/complain about something with my own mother. I did not receive a response either time. The third time, I demanded a meeting with all involved as I was blatantly lied to by a nurse regarding medication given. Amazingly, the meeting happened. I received NO support from the director and her assistant - they just listened. The nurse tried to lie again, and I called her out on it. She resigned on the spot. When Dr. Natesan joined Dr. Thimm at WNH, she was assigned to the wing my mother was on. She and her NP were horrid...told my mother it wasn't worth checking into the pain she complained about because of her advanced age, and told her there was nothing they could do for another issue except give her Tylenol. At that point, I requested that my mother's care be transferred back to Dr. Thimm. Thankfully, he immediately dealt with the issue as Dr. Nateson SHOULD have done. I wouldn't go to her if I was dying. No joke. I don't know who is running the place now, but I hope he/she is better than the long-timer. I do know that the place needs some serious work on the physical property - it's as old as Methuselah and depressing. The employee attrition rate is very high for good reason, not to mention the excessive firing of good people. I will say it rarely had the typical bad odor that many nursing homes do, so I will give them that. Elderly folks should be treated no differently in terms of care than any others, and they deserve respect. That is rarely the case at WNH. My mother was treated better than most because we got to know and love most of her caregivers and tried to show them our immense appreciation in any way we could. This area needs a GOOD nursing home BADLY!
We often lived with our elders newly married and in the end they ended up with us and we took care of them. Not filing them away in some Nursing home taken care of by ill qualified strangers that are hardly health care professionals. When they and you have had too much you just call Hospice and like an abortion they are more than happy to relieve you of the responsibility.
Management and staff in area nursing facilities are horrible. But govt should not be in health care business. They made a mistake 40 years ago and should end it now.
Anonymous said...
January 8, 2019 at 2:09 PM HEY STUPID . LEARN TO READ
When did Cannon become executive? because he is quoted in the articled
Council President John Cannon said he recognized residents’ concerns.
“The council is very much aware of the community’s concerns on the nursing home,” he said, “and we want to make sure that we do tread very lightly as we review this.”
Cannon gave his reasons for withholding information on the Wicomico Nursing Home.
So maybe you can elaborate how this is all Culvers fault when the COUNCIL knew about what was going on and intentionally withheld information from the public???
January 9, 2019 at 7:19 AM
Hey Dumba$$! There is a difference in PAYING ATTENTION and READING!! You obviously don't know the difference in Legislative Body and Executive Body. The Executive Body is the one that wants to sell this building and is the one to make that move. The Legislative Body isn't the decision maker. DUMBA$$!
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