It's great to hear that the Douglas County Visiting Nurses Assn. is back on firm financial ground.
It was disturbing to learn a year ago that the nonprofit home health agency that provides so many important services for county residents was $250,000 in the red. That kind of deficit doesn't bode well for the long-term survival of an agency.
But the good news last week is that the agency has turned around its financial situation and now is more than $150,000 in the black. The agency also has a new director, but Pat Donahue, the VNA board president who oversaw major changes in the agency in the last several months, was careful not to place any blame on the last two VNA directors. VNA's quality of care has been consistently excellent, Donahue said, but the agency's failure to adapt to changes in the home health reimbursement scheme had hurt it financially.
Working with an Atlanta-based consulting firm, VNA reduced its staff and changed its billing system for Medicare, which provides about 60 percent of the agency's budget. The needed changes turned out to be more radical than the board expected, Donahue said, but the results have been dramatic.
During about eight months without an executive director for the agency, the volunteer VNA board, aided by a dedicated staff, obviously rose to the challenge of redesigning the agency and restoring its financial health. The job went far beyond normal board oversight of an agency, and the community owes board members a debt of gratitude for their work.
Douglas County VNA made 41,000 home health visits last year, serving 950 people in the county, regardless of their ability to pay. Those visits gave people the support and care they needed to remain at home rather than being forced into a hospital or other care facility.
While Douglas County VNA has been through a rough spot, it has come out far better than many home health agencies. The new VNA director, Judy Bellome, told the Journal-World that 4,000 agencies had to close their doors or merged with another entity to survive the restructuring of the Medicare payment system.
Douglas County residents obviously are the lucky ones. The agency that County Commissioner Bob Johnson declared a year ago was heading for a "train wreck" now is definitely back on track thanks to the efforts of a dedicated staff and volunteer board.
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