Caribou rehab administrator says facilities have been underfunded for nearly 10 years
CARIBOU, Maine — Phil Cyr, administrator of the Caribou Rehab and Nursing Center, held a meeting last week in which he addressed legislators Peter Edgecomb and Carol McElwee, Bruce Poliquin’s Staff Assistant Kim Rohn, among other guests. Cyr’s sister, Presque Isle Rehab and Nursing Center Administrator Rose-Marie Louten, was also in attendance.
Cyr warned his audience that regional nursing homes are in a state of financial crisis, and that they may be forced to shut down unless that crisis is averted via government assistance. These financial problems, according to Cyr, have been dramatically affecting Maine nursing homes for nearly 10 years.
Cyr attributes the nursing home’s budgetary challenges to a number of factors, such as the state government’s recent decision to keep all savings accumulated by the nursing home instead of splitting them 50/50. He also explained that government reimbursement is not keeping up with rising inflation levels.
MaineCare was among the issues that Cyr brought to his audience.
“There are a lot of people who think that MaineCare is like Medicare,” explained Cyr. “If you’re on Medicare, you pay for that all your life through social security. MaineCare is something they think everybody should be entitled to, but the government would be broke if everybody in the country were on MaineCare.”
“Actually,” Cyr added, “the government is broke, and maybe this is why.”
The administrator explained that the Berry Dunn accounting firm recently found that Maine nursing homes were on the brink of collapse and that, when this information was brought to the state government, the legislature created a commission to further investigate the issue.
“I was appointed to this commission,” said Cyr. “Nursing homes are going out of business because they’re bankrupt. They haven’t had an inflation increase for over 10 years, and there were no private payments because everyone was getting on the MaineCare bandwagon. It wasn’t rocket science.”
Cyr explained that, when it was discovered that hospitals were underpaid, they were properly reimbursed, but that no such plan is established for nursing homes.
“The Maine nursing home industry was losing an excess of $30 million a year,” said Cyr. “Let’s try to wrap our heads around that. There are about 100 nursing homes in the state. That’s $300,000 a piece.”
To put this issue in perspective for his audience, Cyr compared MaineCare to other forms of state assistance.
“Food stamp recipients pay full price at the grocery store,” said Cyr. “The grocery store doesn’t have to sell below their cost. I’m not talking about the charge, but the cost. You have your charge, your cost, and then you have the MaineCare payment, which is below what it costs you to provide the service. Heating oil dealers do not sell to low-income heating assistance recipients below their cost.”
The administrator concluded by warning his audience that, if this continues, the Cyr family nursing homes in Caribou and Presque may not be around much longer.
“The bottom line is that, after ten years or so of this, the Cyr family is starting to seriously consider offering only rehab and private care,” said Cyr, “we are continuing to lose money because of MaineCare. Why should we offer our services when last year we (the Caribou and Presque Isle nursing facilities) provided $11.4 million worth of services and only netted a profit of $43,687? How many businesses that have $11 million a year make a little under $44,000? It’s three-eighths of one percent. It’s not sustainable.”
