Colfax Health and Rehab is NOT closing

by LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX — The Colfax Health and Rehabilitation Center is not closing.

The Dunn County Board’s meeting packet for the June 21 meeting, in a discussion about the budget for 2024 pertaining to the Neighbors of Dunn County, stated that Colfax Health and Rehab had closed.

While the budget discussion focused on skilled nursing at that point, the information seemed to indicate the whole facility had closed. 

When many people think of the Colfax Health and Rehabilitation Center, they tend to think of the entire facility as “the nursing home,” rather than skilled nursing, assisted living and the Sandy Ridge Apartments.

For 42 years, the facility, located on High Street on the northeast side of Colfax, was known as Area Nursing Home. The facility switched to “doing business as” the Colfax Health and Rehabilitation Center in 2008 and moved to the current on the south side of Colfax about 10 years ago.

Area Nursing Home opened in 1966. Several additions were constructed in subsequent years. The latest addition included the clinic built onto the west end in the mid-1970s.

Gary Stene, county board supervisor from Colfax and vice-chair of the county board, who chaired the June 21 meeting in the absence of Kelly McCullough, chair of the Dunn County Board, attempted to set the record straight.

Stene explained the skilled nursing portion of CHRC had closed and that those beds would be converted to assisted living, so the facility is now devoted to assisted living with no skilled nursing.

CBRF

Amber Parzyck, who is listed on the Colfax Health Rehab website as the director of nursing, graciously agreed to answer questions from the Colfax Messenger.

“The facility is not closing. We are currently in the process of converting our skilled nursing facility to a CBRF (assisted living),” she said.

CBRF stands for Community Based Residential Facility.

“We will be expanding our CBRF license to serve an additional 28 residents who may need more assistance with daily living tasks, which will include residents who are non-ambulatory and may need to use a mechanical lift to transfer. There will be no change to our current CBRF or RCAC,” Parzyck said.

RCAC stands for Residential Care Apartment Complex.

Aging in place

When the new facility was built, it was designed so people could “age in place.” 

Residents could start out at the RCAC in their own apartment, then move to the CBRF when they needed more help, and then, if they needed skilled nursing, could move to the skilled nursing unit.

There are a variety of reasons for closing the skilled nursing unit at CHRC.

As is the case with virtually almost everything, the cost of care at a long-term care facility has increased over the past 10 years.

In that same time period, the reimbursement from Medicaid has not increased enough to help cover the increased cost. 

For a certain number of years, Wisconsin had the lowest Medicaid reimbursement rate out of all 50 states.

Late in 2022, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced that the Medicaid coverage of costs at nursing homes would increase from 77 percent to 91 percent for 2023.

In addition to years of inadequate Medicaid reimbursement rates, there is now a labor shortage.

“We are closing the nursing home down [skilled nursing] related to the nursing shortage,” Parzyck said, adding that the increased cost of goods and the Medicaid reimbursement rates were factors as well.

The county board packet noted that four facilities within a 45-minute drive had closed in the last three years. 

In addition to Colfax Health and Rehab, Pioneer Health and Rehab in Prairie Farm has closed as has Grace Lutheran – Prairie Point in Altoona and Clearwater Care Center in Eau Claire.

Alternatives

So what alternative would people living at the Colfax Health Rehabilitation Center have for skilled nursing if they cannot remain in Colfax?

Skilled nursing services are still provided by American Lutheran Homes in Menomonie, Dove Health Care in Bloomer, the Neighbors of Dunn County and Glenhaven in Glenwood City, Parzyck said.

“During this transition and going forward, all employee positions will be retained. We also would like to hire new employees to care for residents and will train the right individuals,” she said.

During the time that the Colfax Messenger has been writing stories about Area Nursing Home and then the Colfax Health and Rehabilitation Center, what has come through over and over is that people appreciate the local facility because there have been friends and neighbors and relatives working there who are caring for friends and neighbors and relatives.

“We will continue to focus on exceptional care to our residents and continue to treat all our residents like family,” Parzyck said. 

Not-for-profit

Colfax Health and Rehab became a “not for profit” facility in 2010.

During the summer of 2011, Colfax Health and Rehab announced plans for building a new facility. The board of directors of the Colfax Health and Rehabilitation Center had just completed  negotiations with Don and Marcia Henderson to purchase a 19-acre parcel south of the village limits east of state Highway 40.

The board of directors also had executed an offer to purchase 4.5 acres from West Cap within the village limits adjoining the Henderson property. These two parcels combined created a location for the center’s expanded health care services.

Colfax Health and Rehab planned to build a 40-bed skilled nursing facility along with a 16-unit assisted living complex and a 14-bed memory care assisted living facility. 

The new campus was expected to have the capacity to serve 72 residents with room for future expansion and growth. 

At the time that CHRC announced plans to change the name under which the facility operated, there were 69 beds.

In 2017, according to “Long-term Care Workforce Crisis: A 2016 Report,” one in seven direct caregiver positions in Wisconsin’s nursing home and assisted living facilities were vacant. The survey discovered there were, at that time, as many as 11,500 job openings in long-term care facilities across the state. 

The report was produced by the Wisconsin Health Care Association/Wisconsin Center for Assisted Living, LeadingAge Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association and the Residential Services Association of Wisconsin. 

According to the report, at that time, the average Wisconsin facility lost $55.89 per day for each Medicaid recipient. The reports noted there were 16,490 Medicaid recipients residing in nursing homes, which would amount to a daily loss statewide of $921,626 — or nearly $1 million per day. 

During a meeting with state Senator Terry Moulton in January of 2017, Jill Gengler, CHRC administrator in 2017, said the facility was losing $57 per day per Medicaid recipient.

If Colfax Health and Rehab had 50 Medicaid recipients, that would amount to a loss of $2,850 per day, or a little over $1 million per year.

If Colfax Health and Rehab had 35 Medicaid recipients, that would amount to a loss of about $2,000 per day, or about $750,000 per year.

“The combination of heavy reliance on the Medicaid program and the insufficient funding of that program severely limits a nursing home’s ability to compete in a tight labor market,” the 2017 “Long-term Care Workforce Crisis” report stated.

In the past six years, and following the COVID-19 pandemic, the labor market has only gotten tighter.