TESTIMONIALS

​My wife, Mary, is suffering from an injury that occurred to her spinal column. It’s been ongoing for a while. As a result of that, she wears a cervical brace 24/7. She has no feeling from her waist down, and she cannot walk any longer. She needs continuous care. And that is something that the family cannot do for her.

I moved my aunt up from Florida four years ago. She has MS, has been in a wheelchair for 40 years. Having my aunt here in Iowa is wonderful. If we didn’t have this wonderful facility in our small community, it would be more challenging for me to be able to see her on a daily basis. I would have to drive out of town, which isn’t always feasible since I work full-time.

My family member that is getting the care is my loved one. The type of care now that he needs, is that he needs to be cued every day on his daily activities such as brushing your teeth, learning how to eat, even not getting lost in the hallway. So he needs definite 1:1 care. I couldn’t leave him home alone. 

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Life for individuals who need a care facility that don’t have that option is scary. If you don’t have funding, you don’t have staff. And if you don’t have staff, you don’t have a facility. 

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My younger sister, she is in Newton, and she is bipolar and schizophrenic. She is just getting worse with early dementia. I need to get her back to Southeast Iowa. That’s the long-term goal because I worry about the long-term care.

It costs on average $369.21 per day to care for a resident in our facility. Our Medicaid reimbursement rate is $213.64, or 57.8% of costs. That's compared to $155.57 we lose every day on costs to care for Medicaid residents.

Part of the issue with the staff shortage in buildings and having permanent staff is if we were able to have the funding to raise the wages for staff that is there, I feel like we would be able to get a lot more permanent staff.

I know I don’t have to explain the extreme detrimental effect inflation has had this year. The impact on our facility, and our entire sector, has been particularly devastating. The situation is not sustainable, and we need your help.

It’s not affordable for some people to be working as a CNA and care for their families, so I feel that is a very big thing that plays into staffing shortages. If we had more funding of long-term care, I feel like it would fix a lot of problems.

We provide care for about 85-90 Iowans in their community. Our town is 1,200 people. If they can’t come to our facility (when they need care), they have to leave their community, their church, their friends and their families.

Increasing at an alarming rate are inflationary pressures and shortages of resources, most notably labor being hard to come by. Rates have not kept with our labor and input costs, which has really become a threat to our solvency.

We need additional Medicaid funding due to the significant growth in costs the past few years, primarily wages and staffing costs, to continue to care for our patients. Many locations, without additional funding, are likely to cease to exist."

One major item we have been dealing with in the last year is wage inflation. We’ve lost employees to competitors who continue to raise wages. Skilled nursing facilities cannot compete on wages with the fixed reimbursement system that we have currently.

As we strive to provide the quality of care our residents deserve, our costs over the past year have gone up by over 14%. We would appreciate any help in increasing the Medicaid rate to help fill these gaps.

We need acute care, long-term care and clinics to serve the needs of our community. If we lose any more of our nursing facility beds, it will create a great back log in the acute care side.

Two of our facilities have seen a cost inflation of 11% this year, and have suffered extreme financial losses. These facilities do not have a future without a 2023 rebase rate adjustment."

Our current Medicaid rate is $192.49 per day with costs running at $274.75 per day, totaling a loss of $82.26 per resident per day. Without a rebase adjustment in 2023, we will see more skilled nursing building closures in Iowa [resulting in] local families traveling farther to visit loved ones and direct care workers needing to travel outside of their home communities to find jobs in their profession.

With the surge of all-time-high inflation, the cost of everything is increasing rapidly. Our cost average per patient per day is $270.54. Our Medicaid reimbursement rate is $189.28. This means we will have a yearly deficit of $460,166.40. This equals roughly 41% of our annual payroll. Long-term this loss will make it impossible for our facility to sustain itself.

Our facility is the only facility Clarence, and we also serve six other surrounding communities. If we did not have a facility in our community, our residents would have to travel outside of the area to receive care. Without a rebase rate adjustment in 2023, we will see several more skilled nursing facilities close in Iowa. We will see more families traveling to visit loved ones and more people moving to different communities  for work.