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A county-owned nursing home in rural Wisconsin may soon be sold to a private company

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Counties across the U.S. are increasingly trying to get out of the nursing home business to cut costs. Addie Costello with Wisconsin Public Radio and the nonprofit investigative reporting group Wisconsin Watch has this report.

ADDIE COSTELLO, BYLINE: There are 326 nursing homes in Wisconsin. Thirty-six of those are county owned - more than almost anywhere else in the country. Eighty-six-year-old Arlene Meyer lives in one of them in Lincoln County in the northern part of the state. She says it's not hard to stay busy at her home.

ARLENE MEYER: People say, in here? Yeah.

COSTELLO: Lincoln County has three nursing homes - two for-profit and this county-owned nursing home called Pine Crest. It has operated since the 1950s. Meyer sits in her room, where she reads off her monthly event calendar.

MEYER: Now, this is only on Sunday. Trivia they have, which is enjoyable, makes the brain work.

COSTELLO: Followed by a storytelling workshop and a sing-along. On other days, there's chair Zumba, bingo, animal therapy and even beer pong.

MEYER: I love it here. I sincerely do.

COSTELLO: But she worries that will change. According to health policy research firm KFF, government-run nursing homes comprise just 6% of the industry. And experts say the country has been losing county nursing homes for decades. Wisconsin has lost more than 20 of them since the late 1970s. The Lincoln County board started looking for a buyer in 2023.

MEYER: I was teed off about it. Now I think about it and think, you know, what jerks were running this?

COSTELLO: Analysts say during periods of recession and inflation, county leaders often see public nursing homes as a way to make budget cuts. Lincoln County board Chair Jesse Boyd says board members are working to get county expenses under control. But...

JESSE BOYD: Right now we're drowning.

COSTELLO: He says a sale is the best way to keep Pine Crest open. According to the American Health Care Association, at least 770 nursing homes have closed nationwide since 2020. About a third were nonprofits. For-profit owners have not been immune to closures, but some county leaders in Wisconsin, like Boyd, believe private buyers can better maintain their nursing homes. They can make improvements to the facilities without having to vote for or consider raising taxes. David Grabowski is a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School. He says county nursing homes often focus on accessibility.

DAVID GRABOWSKI: A for-profit provider, as the name implies, has this obligation to really be very financially motivated in order to stay in operation.

COSTELLO: He says private providers can make county homes more profitable by admitting fewer residents who rely on government assistance and need more expensive care. Another way they find profits - cutting back on staff.

GRABOWSKI: They're going to be a much, much leaner operation in terms of how they deliver services.

COSTELLO: Grabowski says public nursing homes like county-owned facilities often deliver higher-quality care than for-profits. Federal Medicare data shows Wisconsin's county-owned facilities, on average, draw fewer complaints than facilities in the state owned by for-profits.

DORA GORSKI: We own it. It's our place.

COSTELLO: That's Dora Gorski. Her late husband, Ken, moved into Pine Crest when he had advanced dementia.

GORSKI: We all take pride in it being here, and we feel like it's important to the community.

COSTELLO: It meant a lot to her that many staff and residents already knew her husband from aikido classes he taught and his time working in health care. Gorski says that's not something you find in for-profit facilities.

GORSKI: You find it in a county-owned, community-run nursing home.

COSTELLO: With the majority of Lincoln County board members currently in favor of selling and interested buyers lined up, Pine Crest isn't likely to stay county owned for long, something Gorski and organizers across the state plan to keep fighting.

For NPR News, I'm Addie Costello in Madison, Wisconsin.

(SOUNDBITE OF KOTARO SAITO'S "LAVENDER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Addie Costello