The McLean County Nursing Home collected $890,468 more than they had forecast for revenue in 2022 from private pay patients. This allowed them to pay for several expenses where they were over budget as McLean County continues its year end cleanup. The Health Committee voted Thursday to forward ordinances to the county board related to these cleanups.
“Additional revenue means you have a higher census and more people to take care of,” McLean County Assistant Administrator Cathy Dreyer told Cities 92.9 after the meeting.
$400,000 of that went to Temporary Employment Services, to pay a nursing agency that the home has to contract with to provide care for its residents.
According to Nursing Home Director Tim Wiley the home is down to 15% agency staff for February. This means the home is able to staff 85% of the nursing staff with McLean County employees instead of using contracted agency nurses. That saves the county money and provides more consistent care.
After the Covid Pandemic started the nursing home was only able provide half of that level of employees to staff its nursing positions. It had to use service agencies to fill 50 to 60% of its nursing positions.
County Administrator Cassy Taylor told us, “That is the nature of the business right now. We are not the only nursing home that has suffered from a shortage of nursing staff since pandemic time which makes the shortage of nurses right now even more difficult.”
The nursing home is also serving more people than it was during the pandemic. At that time there were not only nursing shortages but also people were not going into nursing homes as frequently.
“Coming out of the other side of the pandemic we have seen a slow increase in referrals and a slow increase in admittance to the nursing home and so we are hopeful that in 2023 we can hit a consistent census of over 100 residents,” Taylor told us.
Another major adjustment was in the Tort Judgement Fund where $539,115 had to be added to pay for cost overruns.
Most of that went to pay $377,330 of health care expenses for non-employees. Those persons consisted of inmates in the county jail and juveniles in detention.
“They are hospital expenses where we have to take one of the inmates to (the hospital) if they have dialysis care or if they have emergency medical care,” Taylor told us.
Taylor explained, “That one is a difficult one to estimate in your budget because you don’t know what your census is going to be in the jail. And you don’t know how well or how ill those people will be when they come in.”
The Justice Committee also voted to send an ordinance to cover these adjustments to the full county board which will meet next Thursday.
