Visiting Nurses Assn. is alive and well.
So well, in fact, the once-troubled agency has told the Douglas County Commission it's no longer strapped for cash.
"They've made an incredible turnaround," said county administrator Craig Weinaug. "It looks like whatever was broken, they've fixed."
A year ago, the association's books were more than $250,000 in the red. To curb costs, it had stopped taking new home care patients, cut managerial salaries, eliminated employee pay raises, stopped making contributions to employee retirement funds and slashed overtime pay.
"We were in a situation that couldn't continue. It very definitely needed to be responded to and responded to quickly," said Patrick Donahue, a Lawrence lawyer and president of VNA's governing board.
VNA's troubles peaked when Commissioner Bob Johnson compared the program's finances to a pending "train wreck" that he said he wanted no part of.
"It wasn't very nice of me to say that," Johnson said last week. "But it needed to be said. VNA is a great program that provides a wonderful service, but it appeared to us that if they stayed on the path they were on, they were going to encounter significant difficulties."
From left, Judy Bellome, the new Visiting Nurses Assn. director, Patrick Donahue, VNA board president, and nurses Margie Koeppe and Janet Cairns go over administrative business at the VNA office, 200 Maine.
A nonprofit organization, VNA provides home-based and hospice care to Douglas County residents, often regardless of their ability to pay. VNA workers called on 950 county residents last year, providing more than 41,000 in-home visits.
Of VNA's $4.2 million budget, about $291,000 comes from Douglas County.
Last month, VNA's books were more than $150,000 in the black.
So how'd they do it?
"We redesigned the agency," Donahue said.
With the help of an Atlanta-based consulting firm, Donahue said, VNA soon realized that many of its services were being provided in ways that Medicare no longer covered. At the same time, it wasn't billing Medicare as much as it could for the services that were covered.
Medicare payments account for more that 60 percent of VNA's home health budget and 86 percent of its hospice budget.
Also, VNA was overstaffed, Donahue said.
"We are down 10 positions from where we were in October 2004," he said. "That was done through attrition, some layoffs and moving people around within the agency."
VNA's plight was not unique, said Judith Bellome, VNA's new executive director.
"What happened was in October of 2000, Medicare switched from a payment system based on the number of visits to a system based on diagnosis and outcomes," Bellome said.
"That was no small thing," she said. "Nationwide, 4,000 home health agencies ended up closing their doors or merging."
Bellome's first day on the job was Monday. She replaced Donahue, who had been volunteer interim director since March.
Donahue's predecessor, Jan Jenkins, resigned in December. She had replaced Marceil Lauppe in 2002. Lauppe had been director since 1980.
The agency's overhaul, Donahue said, included adjusting to a new computer system. The entire staff, he said, has been retrained. Accounting procedures, too, are different.
"The changes we've been through," he said, "turned out to be more radical than what we thought they'd be - and we're not through. This is an ongoing process."
Donahue said neither Lauppe nor Jenkins were to blame for VNA's troubles.
"The whole time this has been going on, we've been providing excellent care," he said. "That's the important thing."
Despite the turmoil and salary freezes, few VNA employees have jumped ship.
"You have to be willing to change and to adapt," said Janet Cairns, a patient care coordinator at VNA. "We're excited. We're ready to move forward."
Johnson welcomed news of the turnaround.
"What they've done is absolutely remarkable," he said. "We are delighted. Somebody over there - no, everybody over there - deserves an enormous pat of the back. I'm sure some very tough decisions were made."
Comments
LJWorld.com doesn’t necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full policy. Also, read about banned accounts and harassing comments.