 |
By Jack Healy
MOBRIDGE, S.D. —
Harold Labrensz spent much of his 89-year life farming and ranching the
rolling Dakota plains along the Missouri River. His family figured he
would die there, too.
But late last
year, the nursing home in Mobridge, S.D., that cared for Mr. Labrensz
announced that it was shutting down after a rocky history of corporate
buyouts, unpaid bills and financial ruin. It had become one of the many
nursing homes across the country that have gone out of business in
recent years as beds go empty, money troubles mount and more Americans
seek to age in their own homes.
For
Mr. Labrensz, though, the closure amounted to an eviction order from his
hometown. His wife, Ramona, said she could not find any nursing home
nearby to take him, and she could not help him if he took a fall at
home. So one morning in late January, as a snowstorm whited out the
prairie, Mr. Labrensz was loaded into the back of a small bus and sent
off on a 220-mile road trip to a nursing home in North Dakota.
“He
didn’t want to go,” said Mrs. Labrensz, 87, who made the trip with her
husband. “When we stopped for gas, he said, ‘Turn this thing around.’ ”
More than 440 rural nursing homes have
closed or merged over the last decade, according to the Cowles Research
Group, which tracks long-term care, and each closure scattered patients
like seeds in the wind. Instead of finding new care in their homes and
communities, many end up at different nursing homes far from their
families.
In remote communities like
Mobridge, an old railroad town of 3,500 people, there are few choices
for an aging population. Home health aides can be scarce and
unaffordable to hire around the clock. The few senior-citizen apartments
have waiting lists. Adult children have long since moved away to bigger
cities.
“How often have you heard somebody say, ‘If I go to a nursing home, just shoot me?’” said Stephen Monroe, a researcher and author who tracks aging in America. “In the rural areas, you don’t have options. There are no alternatives.”
The
relocations can be traumatic for older residents, and the separation
creates agonizing complications for families. Relatives say they have to
cut back visits to one day a week. They spend hours on the road to see
their spouses and parents.
“Before, I
could just drop by five days a week,” said the Rev. Justin Van Orman, a
Lutheran pastor who moved back to Mobridge to be closer to his
79-year-old father, Robert. “He knew I was there.”
Not long after
Mr. Van Orman’s father moved from Mobridge to a new nursing home about
50 miles away, Mr. Van Orman got a call saying his father had fallen out
of bed. Mr. Van Orman had to decide: Should he upend his day to check
on him, or wait and take the nursing home’s word that his father was
O.K.?
Similar scenes are playing out in other heavily rural states. Five nursing homes closed in Nebraska last year, with more at risk of closing. Six shut down in Maine — a record, according to the Bangor Daily News.
Thirty-six
rural nursing homes across the country have been forced to close in the
last decade because they failed to meet health and safety standards.
But far more have collapsed for financial reasons, including changing
health care policies that now encourage people to choose independent and
assisted living or stay in their own homes with help from caregivers.
Some
nursing homes cannot find people to do the low-paying work of caring
for frail residents. Others are losing money as their occupancy rates
fall and more of their patients’ long-term care is covered by Medicaid,
which in many states does not pay enough to keep the lights on.
South
Dakota chips in less than any other state in the nation to pay for
long-term care for residents on Medicaid, said Mark B. Deak, executive
director of the South Dakota Health Care Association. He added that the
state’s low payment level — a product of South Dakota’s fiscal
conservatism and distrust of government-run health care — has now
created a crisis.
 |
Five
South Dakota nursing homes have shut down in the past three years, and
dozens more are losing money because the majority of their residents
rely on Medicaid. At current reimbursement rates, nursing homes in the
state lose about $58 a day for each resident on Medicaid, Mr. Deak said.
It adds up to $66 million a year in losses statewide.
“The state has not held up its obligation to seniors,” Mr. Deak said. “How many more nursing homes closing is it going to take?”
Gov.
Kristi Noem has proposed a 5 percent increase in the state’s Medicaid
reimbursement rate. Mr. Deak said that would not be nearly enough to
cover the losses.
The 89-bed Mobridge
Care and Rehabilitation Center was rated overall as “below average” by
Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare program, though for patient care, the
home received four out of five stars in the agency’s assessment. The
brown brick building was getting old, and had been damaged by a bad
summer storm in 2018.
The nursing
home had been part of a chain that switched hands and foundered
financially, ultimately ending up in court-appointed receivership. In
November, the receiver told a South Dakota judge that the chain’s
operations were bleeding money, and that it needed to close down the two
homes in the chain that were deepest in the red. Mobridge was one.
The
South Dakota Department of Health did not object, and the judge agreed
to the closure. Word began to spread through the home and through town:
The residents had about two months to find somewhere else to go.
Black Hills Receiver, which had taken over operation of the nursing home, said in a November statement
announcing the closure that it was working with residents, their
families and employees “to make this transition as smooth as possible.”
The company declined an interview request.
On paper, South Dakota and other rural states still have enough
long-term care beds for people who need round-the-clock care. The
problem is where they are. When a nursing home closes in a small town,
the available beds are often so far away that elderly spouses cannot
make the drive, and the transferred residents become cut off from the
friends, church groups and relatives they have known all their lives.
Even
the closest town can feel as though it is a world away when a blizzard
rakes across the prairie and turns the two-lane road out of Mobridge
into a billowing scarf of snow.
For
six days this winter, Loretta Leonard could not make the 20-mile drive
to see her husband, Dick, who is 91 and suffers from severe dementia, at
his new nursing home. When he was living close by at the Mobridge home,
she often visited him twice a day, sitting down at the piano to play
the old polkas and hymns and Depression-era tunes their daughters sang
growing up.
“He always knew me,” Ms. Leonard, 88, said. “Sometimes I wonder whether he knows me anymore.”
The
part-time bus driver for the Mobridge nursing home began keeping a list
as he dropped people at their new homes: “Residents Who Left.” One
resident was moved to Aberdeen, 100 miles east. A husband and wife went
73 miles down Highway 12 to Ipswich. Roommates said goodbye. Fast
friends landed in different homes. One person ended up in Nebraska.
“Like
cattle,” said Nadine Alexander, a certified nursing assistant who
worked at the Mobridge nursing home for 29 years. “They were just
hauling them out.”
On the snowy day
that Harold Labrensz left Mobridge for his new nursing home in North
Dakota, not even the bus driver wanted to make the trip. For seven
hours, they crept north along icy roads before arriving.
Mrs.
Labrensz chose the facility because it was close to her son’s home, and
she was able to find a small efficiency apartment just across the
street from the nursing home. They spent 68 years together working their
land, fishing and raising a family, and Mrs. Labrensz said she wanted
to stay close.
“We spent our whole life together,” she said.
She
was also close by when, three days after arriving in North Dakota, Mr.
Labrensz died. The date was Jan. 31 — the same day that, 220 miles away,
the Mobridge nursing home officially closed its doors.
Correction: An earlier version of this article, using information from a source, misstated Ramona Labrensz’s age. She is 87, not 76.
Full Article & Source:
Nursing Homes Are Closing Across Rural America, Scattering Residents
It is a real problem because it also forces those who have to be in a nursing home to be further away from family.
ReplyDelete