UMV
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ill. - After lengthy debacles, finger-pointing and baseless blame, the United Methodist Village board of directors have decided to close the facility's South Campus.
UMV, as it's locally known, has been under fire for quite some time, and if you have an online membership to the e-Edition Archives, you'll be able to read our coverage of it here, here, and here.
However, we learned not long after the last article appeared that the issue with the problem at UMV had nothing to do with then-director Paula McKnight (she's since resigned); she was just the scapegoat for the ongoing mismanagement at the facility, which, we're coming to understand, has nothing to do with McKnight nor former directors, but instead is a combination of the governing board not necessarily knowing what they're doing, and the state's inability to spend our tax money properly.
Now, the announcement has come earlier today (Tuesday, October 2) that the South Campus of the facility is going to be shut down by the end of the year.
While many of the hard-hearted in Lawrence (and there are copious numbers of those) are still mouthing about McKnight and how this might all just be her fault, the fact is that UMV overall has become an unsustainable place because of the fact that Illinois won't pay out fast enough on Medicare and Medicaid recipients, which are a huge number of those in the facility to begin with. Further, there are only 16 residents reportedly being moved from South Campus....which kind of indicates how bad things have gotten, as that's not enough to keep that campus afloat, even if they ALL had private insurance that paid out appropriately.
In the interim from McKnight's resignation (she did resign, despite what Lawrenctuckians are trying to say, which is that she was fired) to the present latest crisis, UMV has reportedly encountered some serious issues.
The new director, Penny Jenner Eckel, was in place and running things when the facility developed a crisis over not having any sterile gloves in-house, as well as encountering no running washer and dryer (both of which situations make it difficult to follow protocol for infection control).
And while the finger-pointing could possibly be aimed at McKnight over those faux pas, the resident who eloped a couple of weeks ago is a situation that falls squarely in the lap of the new director.
Reports to Disclosure indicate that a resident was able to get out of North Campus and over to a church on Tenth Street in Lawrenceville, where this resident got hitched. The kicker...? This is an assisted living facility (nursing home), and no one noticed the resident's absence for HOURS.
So it comes as no surprise that things seem to be winding down for UMV. They are endowed with funds from the United Methodist Church (not just those in the area, but the foundations thereof) provided for the running of the place, yet they complain about the state being late on payments (which is true)...but if the board were doing what it should be doing, management of funds could be conducted a little more judiciously...so that emergencies like no laundry facilities and/or sterile gloves won't just crop up...and residents won't be compounding their problems by hooking up off-campus.