Valley View Home - Letter to the Editor

In response to the recent jabs and cheap shots that are being lobbed through the BS Buzz and The Glasgow Courier at the Valley View board members as well as the whisperings that are circulating about, some of you fools need to take a civics lesson... and in full disclosure, my wife Lisa is on the board of Valley View.

A board of directors DOES NOT MANAGE and nor can they manage an entity, that would be illegal. Board members serve on a board to oversee management as a safeguard to management and that entity. In the case of Valley View, the board recognized that Valley View Home was bleeding red ink which it could not sustain and that something had to drastically change and fast. With the loss of the previous Valley View administrator and with much investigation, the board recommended and hired HHS who had very good endorsements to come in and manage the operations of Valley View and to find and fix the problems (red ink) to make it profitable. HHS did a few good things but turned out not to be so stellar and the Valley View board terminated the Valley View Home contract with them.

After the HHS management was terminated, the board turned for help from the Deaconess Hospital management team who has graciously donated personnel and hundreds of hours of work, at no cost to Valley View as well as bring in key people in the field of elderly patient care and good things are finally happening with very good results. This is what HHS was hired to do and was supposed to do but hindsight is always 20/20 for you people lobbing cheap shots at the Valley View Board from your safe spaces. 

Financially, things are coming to a head at Valley View as many things have been uncovered and needs attention. This whole situation has not culminated under the current board of directors that are now serving, like so many of you in the city of Glasgow and the County think. There are several untruths and 1/2 truths circulating about Valley View and the current board members who are good, smart people trying to create a long term repair for Valley View, the community and the county. The roof on the facility needs to be repaired (replaced) and that took 20-30 years to deteriorate, the parking lot is turning to gravel in places, sidewalks have sunk which are dangerous obstacles for elderly people, window seals and doors are shot, the boiler is at the end of it’s duty cycle, the patient/nurse call station had to be replaced, the back up generator was replaced... all which took years of wear and tear and mother nature to accomplish so where is the savings account which holds the funds to make all these repairs? There isn’t one but the board of directors is getting the blame for a facility that is in dire need of very costly repairs as well as very costly care with not enough income to spread around, it just isn’t there.

The can has been kicked down the road far enough, lowering this 5 percent and raising that 5 percent to make it profitable for today is not going to fix the problem long term because in 25 years, the windows and doors will be shot, the roof will need replacing, the parking lot repaved, sidewalks fixed and on and on and where will the money be? Valley View needs a long term solution to create a long term plan of sustainability for the entire facility inside and out, not rely on the Federal/State Government or the hopes that a person of means will leave a big enough endowment ($$$) to sustain the operations for another year, which is exactly what has helped keep the doors open, God Bless those people.

Healthcare continues to go up while the Medicaid/Medicare subsidy continues to go down, which are two unsustainable opposing forces and both are negative for operating an elderly care facility. I don’t even think Daryl Toews can make that work and he sounds like a pretty smart guy... Valley View is among one of the last elderly care facilities to appeal to the taxpayers for help and believe me, I said I would NEVER vote for anything in Valley County that raised my property taxes ever again, I’VE HAD IT! But I will vote for this to support Valley View which is a very necessary service that we will all need in our lifetime. Statistics prove that 10 out of 10 people will die.

-Jon Wiltfong