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Election news from Yellowstone Public Radio and its partners to help you make an informed decision at the polls.

Voters in Gallatin County to decide on future of rest home

Gallatin rest home exterior
Olivia Weitz
/
Yellowstone Public Radio
The Gallatin Rest Home is a skilled nursing facility that provides long term care and rehabilitation services.

A mill levy in Gallatin County could generate up to around $4 million annually to help fund 69 beds for some of the county’s older, and most vulnerable residents.

Gallatin Rest Home Administrator Darcel Vaughn says it's the only skilled nursing home left in Gallatin County that provides long-term care to Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

The levy would go towards operational expenses and capital improvements.

“They are going to be used for day-to-day expenses, food, the staffing," Vaughn said. "One of the biggest things is capital outlay. There’s things to this building that need to be done that have been put on hold. This is an older building, definitely aging.”

The nursing home does not currently have air conditioning.

Vaughn says the rest home has been operating in the red since 2012. The county has been helping subsidize it, this year with $1.5 million.

The county says one of the main reasons the facility is struggling financially is the state's Medicaid reimbursement rate. County Commissioner Zach Brown says if the state of Montana fixes the reimbursement gap, the county won’t have to levy the full amount in the future.

“We hope that our mill levy question is a short term solution for our facility, but if the state fixes the universal funding problem then we wouldn’t need to rely this substantially on our property taxpayers over time,” he said.

The county says the shortfall is $100 or more per day per resident.

Brown says if the levy doesn’t pass the county could face difficult decisions. There’s been inquiries from companies looking at turning the rest home into a private assisted living facility.

“These are 69 certified Medicaid beds that if we lose them, the community will almost definitely never get them back because there’s no money to be made in this care space," Brown said. "So the idea that some other company or nonprofit or someone else will come in and replace this service or build a new facility that is operating like our county rest home is operating is just not going to happen.”

Olivia Weitz covers Bozeman and surrounding communities in Southwest Montana for Yellowstone Public Radio. She has reported for Northwest News Network and Boise State Public Radio and previously worked at a daily print newspaper. She is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound and the Transom Story Workshop.