Kathryn, Trish and Deanna for Hospital District Levy

We are writing in response to the letter from Ruth Fleming about the PHD levy to purchase Village at the Harbor and create a home care agency.

Our PHD meetings are open to the public and the discussion of this purchase occurred in at least two of these meetings during the summer. A task force was created shortly after the closure of the skilled nursing facility, Life Care Center of the San Juans in 2017, with input from numerous people involved in and concerned about eldercare in our community.

Unfortunately there was an assumption made that we are creating a skilled nursing facility (SNF) and this is NOT the case. Village at the Harbor will maintain its current license, as an Assisted Living Facility. This is a completely different business model than a SNF.

Paying better wages along with benefits should make jobs more desirable and increase the number of applicants for the Village and home care and will help keep the staff we do have, reducing turnover. We will be adding Medicaid beds which does not require additional staffing or equipment and we will not be displacing any current residents. Yes, Medicaid reimbursement is low, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t need to be doing this in the first place. Medicare reimbursement is not an issue as it does not reimburse for assisted living care.

Lack of affordable housing is a crisis in our community and should be a concern for everyone on the island. Unfortunately it is not within the purview of our PHD to provide affordable housing, however there are local groups working to help solve this problem.

As far as plans for expansion of the building and adding additional beds, we have a number of options which are currently in the planning stages. If we wait until all plans are finalized we may be too little too late addressing our community eldercare crisis. And building a facility from scratch would be an enormous cost, in fact most taxpayers might agree it would be prohibitive.

About 5% of the lid lift will be used for other underserved population’s healthcare needs – LGBTQ and reproductive health services for those who can’t afford it (via Mount Baker Planned Parenthood). This is separate from long-term care services and won’t be centered at the Village.

Thank you,
Kathryn Clary, RN
Trish Lehman, RN, PHD Commissioner
Deanna Osborn, CNA, Patient Navigator