PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — The South Dakota Veterans Home is not immune to the problems facing nursing homes across the state.
Officials with the state Department of Veterans Affairs met with the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Appropriations on Thursday morning to discuss budgetary needs and said the Veterans Home in Hot Springs is seeing continued growth in revenue thanks in part to the prevailing rate that many veterans qualify for, which provides a higher rate of reimbursement from the Federal Department of Veteran Affairs.
“The VA has a standard rate of per diem that they’ll pay for veterans in a nursing home,” Deputy Secretary Aaron Pollard explained. “There’s some veterans who, by nature of their disabilities that are service connected through the VA, need to be in the nursing homes for those disabilities.”
Secretary Greg Whitlock said that in the last year there has been an increase in veterans receiving that prevailing rate, which has helped the VA from falling into the same situation that many nursing homes across the state are in where reliance on self-paying and Medicaid reimbursements isn’t enough to keep the doors open.
But despite the growth in revenue, the VA is still being impacted by the nursing shortage that has been affecting other nursing homes in South Dakota.
There are currently 118 full-time employees at the home in Hot Springs, with 17 being contracted Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA) and nurses. Due to a lack of nurses, the home is utilizing contracted workers to fill the openings, but the cost is “very high” compared to what a state CNA or nurse would be paid.
“We’ve had one neighborhood we had to close down and it’s not because of funding or issues like that, it’s because of staffing and when you don’t have enough staff in a home, it makes unsafe conditions for residents and we don’t want those unsafe conditions,” Whitlock said.
VA officials also told lawmakers that there were 7,535 hours of overtime logged by current staff to compensate for the nurse shortage at the home.
That’s why the department is asking for an increase of $480,000 for contractual staffing. The VA said that travelling nurses typically sign 12-week contracts at the home and sometimes will stay for a 12-week extension.
Another issue brought up was the location of the state veteran’s home. The West River location can be difficult for families living in the eastern part of the state who would like to visit their loved ones, Whitlock said. That’s why there are some community nursing homes across the state that contract with the VA to provide care for veterans closer to home.
When asked by lawmakers whether there was a plan to build a veterans home on the eastern side of South Dakota, Whitlock said he couldn’t address that now, but there will be a bill and task force to research elderly care in the state.
During the Joint Committee on Appropriations meeting, VA officials said there would be no budgetary changes for the South Dakota Veterans Cemetery for FY2024.
So far, the cemetery has completed 458 burials and has a total of 2,600 graves in the cemetery. There is a capacity for 26,000 graves in the future. Officials also were happy to share that the recently completed paved road leading into the cemetery was going over well with visitors.
Like the Veterans Home, the cemetery is also seeing staffing shortages in the maintenance staff.
Read More: Not enough nurses to care for South Dakota veterans, VA says