Dateline: March 15, 2007

Committee to consider selling MCNH

An exploratory committee will investigate the possibility of selling the Medical Center Nursing Home following a called meeting of the Donley County Hospital Board last Tuesday.

District officials say there is no urgency in the move and that they only want to look at options for the future of the facility.

“We are not in financial trouble,” Administrator Vicky Robertson said Monday. “We are solvent. Both Medical Center Nursing Home and the Associated Ambulance Authority are making money and will be for a few years.”

But beyond that time things begin to look less certain as expenses continue to rise and income remains stable. District officials think the time to sell may be while the home is in a good position.

“We’d like to see someone who could buy (the nursing home), expand it, and keep the staff at current or higher levels,” said board president Alan Fletcher. “And we want someone who will keep it at the standards we’ve come to expect.”

Fletcher and Robertson both agreed that any potential buyer would also have to be someone with proven financial stability and that the priority must be to keep the facility’s doors open.

“There is no way we want to lose 50 jobs in Clarendon and have 53 residents with no place to go,” Fletcher said.

The nursing home, which is changing its name to Saints’ Roost Manor, has done well this fiscal year, Robertson said. But budget figures for 2007-2008 indicate a deficit in the neighborhood of $56,000.

“Like we said last year in our town hall meeting, there will come a time when expenses will exceed revenues,” she said.

The problems for the nursing home remain the same as a year ago. Texas ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in terms of funding for Medicaid beds in nursing homes, half of the hospital district’s property tax revenue goes toward bonded indebtedness, and a large number of MCNH residents only need assisted living type services and therefore receive the lowest Medicaid reimbursement.

The district also faces challenges from government regulations that change any time and almost always cost money to comply with. A one dollar increase in the minimum wage, for example, could cost the nursing home $40,000 a year when they have to raise salaries to stay competitive.

“We have to stay well above the minimum wage to keep competent staff,” Robertson said.

The district has paid off the notes for constructing the ambulance building and the Community Services Building, but it still owes $1.3 million for the last renovation of the nursing home.

Officials say their options appear to be to expand the nursing home by ten beds or build an assisted living center – either of which would cost about $1 million, raise taxes substantially, or sell the nursing home so the hospital district can focus entirely on indigent care and the ambulance service.

“I think the choice is coming for taxpayers: is it the nursing home or the ambulance service?” Fletcher said. “What benefits the most people?”

Fletcher said the ambulance service will be more expensive in the future because of the recent shift from a volunteer service to a paid service.

“We’ve grown the ambulance service to the point where volunteers can’t do it all,” he said. “We need six full time employees over there.”

The committee investigating the possibility of selling the home includes Robertson and Fletcher and board members Don Thornberry and Mark C. White. There is no timetable for the committee to complete its work, Fletcher said.

“We just want the public to be aware of what’s going on,” he said.