ST. LOUIS — A ºüÀêÊÓƵ aldermanic committee released a slate of recommendations to the city, state and federal government aimed toward boosting quality in nursing homes.
It marked a relatively rare moment of municipal scrutiny in an industry where oversight is almost entirely handled at the state and federal levels.
“Even though the Board of Alderman doesn’t have the power to do as much the state, that doesn’t mean we have to sit on our hands,†said Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, who chairs the committee. “We’re going to do everything we can.â€
The report recommends the Board of Aldermen establish a new, permanent position of a nursing home safety officer, who would help residents and workers access health and safety resources. It also calls on the board to urge or require the city’s building division to enter nursing homes to inspect possible hazards and report its findings to the state and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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The report calls for the state legislature to increase the Medicaid per diem rate to match that of Medicare. It also recommends the Legislature fund the Department of Health and Senior Services to increase the number of staffed inspector positions to 235 from 190 and to fill roughly 22 positions that are vacant. It urges the Legislature to restore $2.2 million that Gov. Mike Parson vetoed from the budget last year, which would have increased funding for VOYCE, the Marlborough-based nonprofit that serves as the region’s long-term care ombudsman program.
The report says each of the city’s remaining 14 nursing homes are for-profit businesses. Six of them have changed ownership in the past five years. It draws attention to the business structure many facilities have, where different companies, often under the same ownership, own the land, operate the home and provide services in it.
The report calls for de-escalation training for nursing home staff, citing the declining age of nursing home residents. In 2020, the average age of a city nursing home resident was 69 years old, from 78 in 2000. The SEIU has said that as more seniors try to “age in place,†nursing homes in the area have accepted more younger residents with mental health conditions. Training doesn’t always keep up.
The committee has been preparing the report for about a year, and the issues it raises — short-staffing, quality issues, shortages of state inspectors — have been known to the industry for years. But the committee had a renewed sense of urgency in the wake of the closure of the city’s largest nursing home in mid-December.
Multiple committee members said during a meeting Monday that they feared the possibility of another abrupt shutdown. Marjorie Moore, executive director of VOYCE, noted that in Northview’s case, the closure was in a region with more agencies that could step in and help, compared to other parts of the state.
“Nursing homes are homes. They are homes first,†Moore said. “We need to make these communities good places for people to live.â€
Following years of declining census, falling revenues and a dispute among its owners, Northview Village Nursing Home closed abruptly over the course of one night. Residents were transported to more than a dozen different facilities, often without notice to family members. Advocates spent days tracking down where each person had been transferred. Financial documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch showed that despite its troubles, from 2020 to 2022 the owners were sending at least $1.5 million annually in rent and other payments to their own companies.
“If you look at the trends in this report, you could see it coming,†said Laura Barrett, Missouri campaign coordinator for the SEIU. “We have to prevent another disaster like Northview Village.â€