The administrator of a Fond du Lac County nursing home says an overdrawn budget is due to a loss of revenue, not increased expenses. The county board this week approved a resolution appropriating nearly $677,000 from the general fund to close out overdrawn 2016 budgets. The majority of that total, $462,000, is at the Harbor Haven Health and Rehabilitation Center, where administrator Mark Redmer says residents were being shuffled due to a major remodeling project. “On the revenue side when you have different parts of the building under construction and residents having to be moved to different parts of the building, its not only an issue of those beds not being in service where the construction is happening, its also taking residents from other portions of the building and putting them in beds they would otherwise not be,” Radmer told the board. Radmer acknowledges the initial budget may have been, in his words, a little aggressive. “…but we had to go with our best estimation not knowing exactly as you went through a project that has seven different phases and different beds in the building being taken out of commission at different points in time exactly what that was going to do to us on the revenue side of things.” But Radmer says given the situation he feels it was managed as well or better than expected. County board chairman Marty Farrell says the county board has gone on record asking the legislature to increase nursing home Medicaid funding. Farrell says he’s confident Harbor Haven will be able to turn their financial situation around.
