Nursing home data in dispute

ALBANY Red ink at county's proposed brand new 200-bed nursing home would be less than half a $26 million projected by state health officials, according to a chairman of a County Legislature.But a state Department of Health upon Wednesday reiterated that its figures that are not doubtful by County Executive Dan McCoy's bureau actually come from a legal body itself.The peculiar stalemate comes as a Health Department panel could weigh in as shortly as April 5 upon whether a county can proceed with its plans to build a $71 million trickery and as county legislative leaders have grown publicly combative with what they say is obstructionism by a state health bureaucracy that wants to retard a construction of new, public nursing homes.Legislature Chairman Shawn Morse, a vocal backer of a project, pronounced a state upon this week refused to tell him whether a county's duplicate for a obligation of need would be considered at subsequent month's assembly of a Department of Health's Public Health and Health Planning Council."That itself is how screwed up a state Health Department is and a whole process when we can't even get information," Morse said. "The frustration turn of getting any team-work from a state of New York is through a roof."County officials could not say with certainty whether their duplicate would even be considered at a assembly of one of a council's subcommittees scheduled for Thursday at a Century House.The dispute stems from a January letter in that a state asked a county whether it was sure it wanted to pierce ahead with a plan in light of projections that a trickery could lose $26.2 million a year.Morse, a Cohoes Democrat, contends that figure is "simply false," pointing instead to what he pronounced has been a county's subsidy of a existing, aging 250-bed trickery of Albany Shaker Road: $7.2 million, $11.9 million, $12.3 million and $10.4 million for this year and a last three.Based upon that, Morse said, it doesn't make sense that a newer, more efficient nursing home that will also have other forms of revenue like adult day caring and could involve a campus with private doctors' offices would lose more money."We're not fools here to consider that we can just build a nursing home standalone and not find other ways to offset a costs," he said.But a mouthpiece for McCoy, Mary Rozak, pronounced those figures do not tell a whole story because they do not embody some $12.5 million a county came up with over a same period in order to receive additional assist from a state and federal government, well known as intergovernmental transfer money."You have to demeanour at all a numbers. You can't just pick and select what we want to demeanour at," Rozak said, observant a costs cited by a legal body also do not embody expenses associated to nursing home employees' pensions.What's more, a spokesman for a Health Department, Peter Constantakes, pronounced it took a $26 million figure from a legislature's own obligation of need application, signed by then-Chairman McCoy, who has since been elected county executive."It was signed off by a county legislature," Constantakes said, adding that a county could have amended a budget after a duplicate was submitted in late 2010.Legislator Gary Domalewicz, an Albany Democrat and chairman of a Nursing Home Facilities Committee, cautioned that a legal body signing off upon a duplicate is not a same as endorsing a accuracy of a loss figure contained in it, that was prepared by an outside consultant.Domalewicz remarkable that, at a time, lawmakers were fighting then-County Executive Michael Breslin's efforts to close a nursing home outright and were eager to get a process of permitting a brand new one started."We questioned those numbers from a beginning. We couldn't get real numbers from a county executive," he said. "But to pierce a process forward we approved a financial study."Asked whether he was concerned a state might now be making a decision based upon a figure a legal body now disputes, Domalewicz pronounced a state owes a county its approval after a state panel in 2006, well known as Berger Commission, called for shutting a county-run Ann Lee Home and significantly cutting a size of any brand new facility. "I hope they make a decision based upon a fact that a Albany County Legislature has repeatedly made it clear that they want an Albany County Nursing home," Domalewicz said.jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com 518-454-5445 @JCEvangelist_TU Powered By iWebRSS.co.cc

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