Deer Isle Originally published in Island Ad-Vantages, September 1, 2022 INH board on a mission to find staff “Will not be an easy job”

Deer Isle Selectman Ronnie Eaton, Island Nursing Home Board Treasurer Skip Greenlaw and INH Board Member Gidget Fagerberg discuss challenges to reopening the nursing home.

The Island Nursing Home board of directors is looking for staff to reopen the nursing home after the community objected to the plan to sell its skilled-nursing beds.

“What they are trying to do is review all possible opportunities for staffing,” said INH spokesman Dan Cashman in an August 30 phone interview.

Cashman said board members are reaching out to past employees and to island and peninsula towns in search of staff and workforce housing. They are also trying to find out if they can get foreign nurses, he said.

Cashman noted the government has relaxed COVID -19 regulations within the past year, which may mean more people willing to return to work. “People are in a different space than they were a year ago,” he said.

The nursing home closed in October last year because of a staffing shortage exacerbated by the pandemic.

INH Board Treasurer Skip Greenlaw told the Deer Isle select board on August 25 that finding staff is a big challenge.

“This will not be an easy job,” Greenlaw said. “We’ve been told it is virtually impossible.”

According to a scenario provided by the board, INH would need 30 full- and 37 part-time staff to reopen with five skilled-nursing beds and 15 residential-care beds. It would also need another 12 from the per diem, or “on call,” pool.

As of last May, INH had identified only 23 people potentially available, 56 fewer than needed.

The revenue and expenses listed in the adjoining chart are out of date because they are based on 2021 costs, Cashman cautioned.

Using the outdated financial information, INH would lose close to $2 million annually if it were able to staff 15 residential and five nursing care beds.

But nurses are now commanding high wages and signing bonuses of as much as $20,000, Greenlaw said.

“I am scared silly about the escalation of wages for nurses and CNAs [certified nursing assistants],” Greenlaw told the select board.

Stonington Town Manager Kathleen Billings, a former INH board member, questioned the accuracy of INH ’s staffing scenario.

“I had the sense on the board that it was overstaffed,” she said. Greenlaw conceded the nursing home could probably do without a few positions, such as activities director.

Inadequate reimbursement from the government would account for the projected loss. But INH ’s former treasurer, Hubert Billings, said there may be a way to work it out. “When we started the state wasn’t reimbursing enough, so we made up the difference with private pay,” Billings said.

Time is running out. Greenlaw said the nursing home must present a plan to state regulators well before the state’s February 23 deadline. The board will likely decide in September whether to sell some or all of the skilled nursing bed licenses, he said.

The INH board announced in July that it was looking to sell those skilled-nursing bed licenses, but in August more than 1,500 people signed a petition objecting to that plan. The board then shifted gears to try to open with skilled-nursing beds.

Since the nursing home closed, the INH board has emphasized the deficit in trained nurses both nationally and in Maine.

Finding traveling nurses to staff INH is also difficult because of a dearth of affordable housing, Greenlaw said. He said staffing agencies won’t send anyone to the Island Nursing Home until there’s a place for them to live.

Board members are meeting with area select boards to ask for help in finding land on which to build workforce housing, Greenlaw said.

He also said the INH board would like help from a small group of dedicated people to find staff.

The INH board has also tried to recruit former employees, but few have responded, Greenlaw said.

He said Human Resources Director Lori Morey, who still works at INH , sent 72 emails to former employees and received 17 replies. Only four or five people said they were willing to return, he said.

But during the select board meeting, former employees described unfair pay practices and terminations that made them reluctant to work at the nursing home.

Selectman Ronnie Eaton urged the INH board to listen to people who used to work at INH . He said he has talked to some of them.

“They said, ‘We’d be happy to come back with a different board and a different administrator,’” Eaton said.

During the meeting, Eddie Faulkingham, who used to work at the nursing home, said the administration should have tried to retain people rather than kicking them out the door.

“I see people who used to work there all over the island,” Faulkingham said. “A lot of them got done over things they shouldn’t have.”

Amy Billings said new hires got paid more than she did, despite her experience. “I got tired of training people who made more money than I did,” she said. “The board said it was ‘an incentive.’”

Joanne Oliver said she took a leave of absence from INH after she had her second daughter. INH then called her and asked her to help them out of a jam. “I finagled my home life to help them, and I got them out of a jam,” she said. “I got fired, after I got them out of a jam.”

Ten years later, Oliver said, she was home-schooling her three little girls when INH called again because they needed a medical nurse on the night shift.

“The director of nursing and I agreed on a price. I was there for a few months, then I got hauled into the office and got my pay cut by $2 an hour,” Oliver said.

“That’s years ago,” she said. “This is just me. I can imagine what some of these other people were putting up with.”

Greenlaw replied that he was sorry to hear all those bad stories. “It really makes me feel very sad,” he said.

But Gidget Fagerberg, the other INH board member at the meeting, pointed out that she and Greenlaw can’t fix what happened in the past. She said it’s time to turn the page and start working together to reopen the nursing home.

“Why can’t we just move forward?” she said. “We have to hire a new administrator, maybe nurses can be on the team that hires an administrator.”

Fagerberg pointed out that the board has mostly new members who joined after the nursing home announced its closure.

“This is a new board,” Fagerberg said.

Three of the current board members have joined within the past year: Greenlaw, Bill Cohen and Leon Weed. It is unclear when Fagerberg joined. Former Board President Ronda Dodge has resigned, and Tim Hoechst and Cindy Lash will term out in the beginning of October. That will leave five board members, including Karen Vickerson.

The INH board is looking for more members, according to a press release. Anyone interested in joining should reach out to Greenlaw at skipg@midmaine.com or 207-460-1260.