Signs of protest on Wednesday, July 11, being held aloft by protesters chanting hateful slogans such as “Holla if you hate Paula,” were misguided and, according to many, whipped into a frenzy by media who didn’t look carefully into the matter.
LAWRENCEVILLE – Heavy complaints that evolved into protests made for high drama across Lawrence County in late June and early July…but few bothered to try to get to the bottom of why checks were bouncing at Lawrenceville’s United Methodist Village (UMV), and thus set in motion an atmosphere of contention that has turned out to be completely unwarranted.
Blame for the circumstances at UMV lies, not in the administration or the UMV board, but instead, solely at the feet of the state of Illinois as well as the federal government, both of which aren’t making state aid payments on anything resembling a timely manner.
Add to that the fact that a third-party vendor responsible for reports and payments had specific problems with software that generated late payments to employees, and the recipe for, if not an actual disaster, then the perception of one, was brewing in late June.
And thanks to biased mainstream media whipping people into a frenzy on the national level over one thing after another – when in fact most of it is based on erroneous or exaggerated reports of incidents that don’t warrant the attention they’re receiving –folks got the idea in their heads that a “protest” of UMV’s President/CEO, Paula McKnight, was in order.
The problem with that is that McKnight had absolutely no control over what happened, nor was she responsible for it – and this means that those who “protested” her, which protests involved crass and hateful “slogans,” chants and vitriol, was not only unfruitful and unnecessary, but could result in difficulties in the future for the participants, as they engaged effectively in slander against a person who is not a public official and for which civil immunity doesn’t apply.
The history
UMV has been around for so long, many of the current employees don’t have much of a concept of what it was meant to be, or what it actually is.
The place initially began as an actual “village,” a community unto itself, in 1908 in a location in Smithboro (Bond County, in the Metro-East area of southwestern Illinois), so that the Methodist Conference (a group of Methodist churches) could serve older adults with care needs. This site in Smithboro was a large home on 20 lots, which constituted the initial “village.”
Ten years later, St. Francisville, in Lawrence County, was the site of a donation of a home to be used for the Methodist ministry. Perhaps inspired by the contribution, the Lawrenceville Chamber of Commerce purchased the first five-acre tract of land at the current location of village premises on Cedar Street, this in 1925. The three-story main section – the Holden Center – was constructed the next year, and new wings were added in 1953, these for elderly adults who needed care, causing the place to be termed a “nursing home,” which it sort of was, but with more independent living facilities being provided elderly adults as opposed to being limited to the infirm. Southern Meadows, comprised of houses, villas and cottages, was added for independent living, as well as the apartments of Southern Meadows Estates. Other facilities specializing in problems that face seniors today, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, have been addressed by facilities designed to treat and care for clients with those specific needs. Four local doctors provide medical care to the residents of the facilities: Dr. Gary Carr, who is the medical director; Dr. Rachel Winters; Dr. Steven Ramsaran; and Dr. Valerie Burns are all listed as facility providers.
The whole purpose has been to provide a place where seniors can not only have comfortable and professional care, but also so that they can be ministered to by those in the Methodist faith. That effort has not been lost, even under the current climate of secular “independent living” facilities and the difficulties of running a “nursing home” type of operation.
The takeaway from the history of the place is this: It’s one of the largest facilities of its kind; and, in Lawrence County, it’s one of the largest parcels of real estate paying property taxes to the state. Despite the fact that it’s a religion-affiliated, there are no property tax exemptions for UMV owing to the way it’s organized, so it pays its fair share, unlike some religious facilities.
Further, it is likely one of the largest employers – if not the largest – in Lawrence County.
So anything that provides a disruption in the way things are run at UMV naturally sends a ripple throughout the entire county and many of those surrounding, as professionals in the field of healthcare, as well as dieticians, housekeeping, and other specialized staff, are committed to the successful operation of the facility.
No public funds, but at the mercy of public insurance
It might be noted that the facility, while faith-based but not property-tax-exempt, does not receive public funding – tax dollars – of any sort, from any source. The funding for the facility comes almost exclusively from insurance providers, both private and public.
The public providers are federally-funded Medicare, and state-funded Medicaid. And as any Illinois resident who has used those services – or works in a field that deals with billing them – knows, they’re not the easiest agencies to work with. The hoops that have to be jumped through just to get billing done correctly signal a first hurdle that continues to compound the rest of the hurdles of using public insurance (paid for by taxpayers), until the actual “getting paid” (reimbursement) part for providers ends up being months and months down the road.
In the state of Illinois, oftentimes those “months” can turn into years.
Of the 50 states, Illinois continues to hover at dead last in terms of length of time taken to reimburse providers for services. And because the vast majority of clients in UMV are on either Medicare or Medicaid, their reimbursements, when billed properly, drag on endlessly, requiring intervention by attorneys in order to ensure that the two agencies are actually doing everything they can to get those reimbursements in, in a timely manner.
An article about this situation was produced by Disclosure late last year, showing extreme expenses as they pertained to legal fees. As it turned out, the vast majority of expenditures toward the legal fees was necessitated by the village’s law firm having to get involved with reimbursements so that the village could stay solvent.
In other words…Obamacare didn’t help anyone, and may actually have made matters worse, as it made “private” insurance completely unaffordable, and “public” insurance (Medicare/Medicaid) suffer an influx of applicants that clogged up the system.
Applicants and free services
Additionally, when a client comes to UMV, and they don’t have insurance but need services, the facility admits the client, then applies for Medicare/Medicaid on their behalf. This is a common practice, and is growing considerably as the need for assisted living/nursing homes increases.
This procedure can also be interminable, as there appears to be no urgency on the parts of the agencies to push applications through and process them timely. In the meantime, the client, having been admitted, continues to get care until approval…which then starts the clock ticking on reimbursements and another interminable wait. Upstate, there was a case, Koss v. Norwood, that was in litigation for years and which in March of this year it was decided that the state has 90 days to make a determination under such circumstances of a disability application, or 45 days if it’s a non-disability application.
That, however, hasn’t helped much at UMV; it might in the future, but it couldn’t offset what ended up happening in June of this year.
The June problem
A further problem was posed when the facility began having difficulties with a third-party, contracted vendor, which provided billing services, internal reports…and issued paychecks. A glitch in the software effectively caused UMV’s ledger to read that there was no money in accounts when there was, and so when it was time to print reports and issue paychecks, naturally, it printed out the checks…but when they were deposited, the ledgers read the glitch as no funds available, and all checks were kicked back.
At that time, paychecks for staff at UMV all began bouncing, returned to the employees marked “insufficient funds.”
This prompted a level of outrage within staff that rippled out into the city and county and pretty soon, employees were filling their social networking pages with gripes about UMV…and it deteriorated quickly from there.
Some employees actually contacted out-of-area media – specifically, TV stations that cover Lawrence County, including Evansville, Terre Haute and Champaign – and advised them that the whole reason for the checks bouncing is because “Paula McKnight has been embezzling money; she just bought a new Porsche.”
Disclosure was flooded with emails regarding “embezzlement” on McKnight’s part, but when staff asked the accusers what their proof was, there was no response. Staff then asked if State’s Attorney Michael Strange had drawn up charges yet, and of course there was no response….because there were, at least as of press time, no charges.
Many staffers at UMV, believing they were never going to get paid, walked out. The facility was compelled to use the remaining staff to try and recruit former employees and volunteers to come in and help cover shifts; family members of many clients of the facility came to move their loved ones to another facility, with many of them going over to Aperion in Bridgeport.
One after another, the TV stations did reports about the surface matters at UMV, glossing past the comments made by the facility’s legal counsel, Nick Lynn, who was explaining about the third-party vendor software glitch early on, but which explanation apparently fell on deaf ears. After all, it makes a much better story to believe that McKnight was “embezzling funds” and buying expensive cars than it does to have an actual explanation that can be tracked with computer documents.
The protest
This TV coverage, albeit one-sided, served to do what TV is designed to do (there’s a reason why they call it “programming”) – it built up the frenzy and promoted even more, “out there” ideas.
Then someone got the idea that to protest the facility, McKnight, and whomever else might be responsible, was a good one.
So on Wednesday, July 11, the street in front of UMV was lined with women in scrubs, holding signs and shouting slogans along the lines of “Holla if you hate Paula,” thereby sealing their opinion that it had already been decided: It was all Paula’s fault.
And as can be seen by all of the previous explanations – every one of them valid and verifiable – it wasn’t.
Disclosure attempted to contact McKnight that day but was unsuccessful. However, word was passed along to the attorney, Nick Lynn, and he, instead of McKnight, contacted Disclosure to apprise them of the situation, all of which has been heretofore explained.
Disclosure questioned Lynn as to any accountability on the part of the UMV board of directors; an individual claiming to be an employee of UMV had advised Disclosure in great detail about how the board had been filtering money from necessary services into McKnight’s personal budget, and because the person spoke with such authority, this paper began to believe that this might have been what the reality was: that it was the board’s fault that checks were bouncing.
However, Lynn explained how that’s not possible, as the board doesn’t “hold the purse strings” of UMV, but are a group of volunteers, mostly comprised of those from the area’s Methodist religious organizations, put in place to ensure the well-being and best treatment and care of those for whom they’re providing services.
“The board had nothing to do with it; Paula had nothing to do with it,” Lynn said after explaining the many factors that played into the checks bouncing. “Checks from Medicare and Medicaid come in on a haphazard basis. And while the problems with the software were very unfortunate, we’ve now changed billing companies and of course there are sufficient funds. There’s no financial crisis, and no problems with residential care.”
As of press time (July 15), it appears that things are on an even keel…but how long it will take to get it all back to “normal” remains unknown.
The Illinois Department of Public Health, as of press time, was investigating UMV, a process they’ll undergo for about three weeks. IDPH will issue a report, which will largely involve whether patient care has suffered in the wake of the incident.
Another matter emerging, however, is a water bill to the city of Lawrenceville.
In early July, the city announced that there was an unpaid water bill of $56,000.
After Mayor Don Wagner advised UMV that the city would be shutting off two non-essential water meters, and met with a UMV representative, the city received a “substantial payment” on the outstanding bill that almost paid all of it.
How, exactly, that bill happened to mount remains unaddressed by Lynn.
However, the village has announced that they are not closing; that they have a “strategic plan” in place that was to be implemented before the close of the month; and that residents and families will be contacted personally with details.
The crisis, it appears, wasn’t really a crisis, but the acrimony remains…and whether anyone has learned from it also remains – to be seen.
Click here to view more product SPECIALS!!!