By June’s end, Prairie Springs in Sequim and Laurel Park in Port Angeles will have evicted six of their elderly residents because they are on Medicaid.
Lucile Cole, who’ll turn 99 on June 13, and Edith Bateman, 93, are among the women and men who received a letter this spring from Assisted Living Concepts, the Wisconsin-based corporation that owns Prairie Springs and Laurel Park.
“The last day of Medicaid participation . . . will be June 30,” the letter stated. “Thank you for the opportunity to be of service to you.”
The evicted residents paid their way with Medicaid, the Social Security Act program designed to provide quality health care to low-income Americans. It is a joint federal-state program, with each state having its own plan.
Cole, at 98 one of the oldest Prairie Springs residents, moved in five years ago.
She spent much of her adult life moving around California and Oregon with her late husband, Duane, who worked in shipyards and construction.
Cole chose Prairie Springs because of its congenial staff and country setting.
“I’ve been happy here,” she said. “I’m too old to move. I’ve moved enough times.”
But she must — like many others at Assisted Living Concepts facilities around the state.
The company’s Victoria House in Port Townsend told nine residents they had to move out in 2007, since their dementia or other needs weren’t adequately covered by Medicaid.
And at Franklin House in Sumner, Pierce County, seniors on Medicaid have also gotten eviction notices.
The Medicaid contracts are up for renewal at Laurel Park and Prairie Springs, and Assisted Living Concepts is opting out, said CEO Laurie Bebo.
“It costs us more to take care of people than what Medicaid pays,” Bebo added.
Assisted Living Concepts, whose slogan is “Life just got easier,” is a publicly traded company that owns 215 assisted living facilities across the United States, including 40 in Oregon and Washington.
Judy Lawson, whose mother Alice Hellerud, 85, moved to Laurel Park six years ago, was shocked by what she called a form letter from the corporate headquarters in Menomonee Falls, Wis.
“I can see that this is a business, and that they can’t take any more Medicaid [patients]. But who knows how long Mom has? I don’t understand why they can’t be grandfathered in.”
Bebo said that once Assisted Living Concepts ends its Medicaid contract, it’s no longer legal for it to house anyone on Medicaid.
The state Legislature passed a law in 2008 prohibiting the eviction of residents with Medicaid; under the statute, those residents may stay as long as they choose.
If a facility has no Medicaid contract, it isn’t subject to the state requirement.
Finding new housing for the six evicted residents of Laurel Park and Prairie Springs was a maze of a task, since many assisted living houses don’t take Medicaid.
St. Andrew’s Place in Port Angeles is one of a scant few on the North Olympic Peninsula that do, but it has a long waiting list.
Thanks to a cadre of social workers at the Department of Social and Health Services, at the Olympic Area Agency on Aging and the resident directors of Prairie Springs and Laurel Park, each evicted resident has found a place to go.
Two women are going into subsidized senior apartments; one woman moved to California to live with family and one man from Prairie Springs is being moved to Seaport Landing in Port Townsend, said Jane Meyer, the regional long-term care ombudswoman for Clallam and Jefferson counties.
“Two others are going to nursing homes, which they’re not happy about,” she added.
“I do have to say the administrators made an effort,” to help, Meyer said, referring to Laurel Park resident administrator Benjamin Barkofsky and Prairie Springs’ Dan Burke.
Some residents and their families are happy to move out, however, and say quality of life at the assisted living facilities has fallen off steeply in recent years.
Prairie Springs’ staffers have been kind — but too often, they don’t stay long, said Grace Wheeler, Cole’s daughter-in-law.
“She just gets to know somebody, and they’re gone,” Wheeler said.
“That’s not atypical for health care generally,” Bebo said.
She attributed high turnover to the fact that workers have so many choices of employers.
“It’s real easy for an employee to transition,” to another facility in the same community or nearby, she said.
“We work as a company to try to reduce turnover for the people we want to keep.”
No longer accepting Medicaid and requiring residents to pay full price, Bebo added, enables Assisted Living Concepts to pay its workers better wages.
Meyer, for her part, feels for the facilities’ local staff people, but questions Assisted Living Concepts’ plan to sever its Medicaid contracts.
Both Laurel Park and Prairie Springs are seeing their numbers dwindle, Meyer said; she wonders why the company won’t continue taking Medicaid payments — which bring at least some income — instead of ending the relationship entirely and letting rooms go vacant.
In response, Bebo said again that Medicaid payments are too low, and declined to say how many private-pay residents live at both facilities.
For those who had to leave, “the concern is transfer trauma,” Meyer said.
Moving at any stage of life can be fraught with stress, but being forced to leave one’s home is especially risky for people in their 80s and 90s.
“Research has borne out that if an elderly person moves involuntarily, there’s a reduction in life span,” she said.
“Sometimes they get into a new environment, and they just thrive. But sometimes the stress of being relocated is too much. I’ve seen cases where they just give up.”
These are people who worked hard for many decades and then, as they grew frail, wanted a place they could stay until the end of their lives, Meyer added.
Bateman, for example, lived in San Francisco and walked up and down its hills into her late 80s. Since moving to Prairie Springs, her Social Security benefits, a small pension and Medicaid have sustained her.
But without Medicaid in the picture, seniors such as Bateman can’t afford the $2,000 to $8,000 per month cost of an assisted-living facility.
“This is indicative of a looming problem that we’re going to have to deal with,” Meyer said.
It’s a catch-22, with long-term care costs rising and facilities backing away from Medicaid.
“It’s going to be scary in the next 10 to 20 years if nobody wants to accept Medicaid,” she said, “while more people may need to go on Medicaid because they can’t afford long-term care.”
People are outliving their savings, or losing large portions of what they had invested for long-term care, Meyer added.
Many counted on pensions and investment accounts to supplement Social Security, “but then a kid loses a job, a husband has a heart attack,” or some other crisis guts what was set aside for old age.
“These people have done everything right. They’ve saved their money,” Meyer said. “But that doesn’t always work.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
