Firmament, a provider of structured equity and debt capital solutions to small- and medium-sized enterprises, announced today an investment in Family Tree Private Care. Family Tree is amongst the premier providers of concierge-level caregiving, private nursing, and care management services to families throughout Texas and Colorado. Firmament's investment will help support Family Tree's organic and inorganic growth initiatives.
A St. Paul-based home health care company is being investigated by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office for fraudulently overbilling the state’s Medicaid program, which is designed to support low-income residents and people with disabilities. State investigators took computers, financial reports, rental agreements, and other documents from Bridges MN on Thursday, according to court documents filed last week. Authorities say they have already tracked $4 million in fraudulent billing over five years, with the possibility of more instances of fraud expected, according to a search warrant.
In 2023, U.P. Home Health, Hospice & Private Duty will celebrate serving Marquette County for 50 years. Founded in 1973, the agency is Marquette County’s only comprehensive provider of Home Health, Hospice, and Private Duty services. In describing what it is like to reach such an important business milestone, founder and president, Cindy Nyquist stated, “I have been fortunate to have had such strong support from my family, my friends, and my community for this important mission. U.P. Home Health, Hospice & Private Duty has been a way for me to live my passion/vocation, and we’ve been doing it now for quite some time. Our goal has always been to help our friends and neighbors regain their independence, to live their life the way that they want to. But the agency isn’t just me. It is so many people over the years. We know that we cannot ever forget our roots in this community, so every decision we make is meant to support and empower our community. We live here, we work here, we raise our families here, sometimes for generations. We are loyal to this community because we are a part of it.”
Are you aware that in the month of October 2022, 11,000 older adults in Minnesota were turned away by long-term care providers because of staffing shortages? That number is staggering. The long-term care profession has been in crisis for many years, but in my 20 years of service to older adults, I have never seen things this dire. The pandemic has thrown us into a world well beyond crisis and I struggle to find a word strong enough to represent our current situation.
A long-term-care law, and the mandatory social program and payroll tax it creates, is so unpopular and has so many problems that legislators delayed its start last January. Moving the new payroll tax’s collection of 58 cents for every $100 a worker makes from January 2022 to July 2023 was going to give lawmakers time to fix the law, we were told. The thing is still broken.
Staff from Fairhaven long-term-care home presented Peterborough County council with good news Wednesday on three fronts: there is a zero-budget increase request for 2023, the facility has already reached four hours of care per resident per day (something that the province mandated happen by 2024) and it hired its “very own” nurse practitioner last week. The majority of Fairhaven’s funding (more than 70 per cent) comes from the Ministry of Long-Term Care, but funding is also provided by the county, which owns one third of the facility, and the city, which owns two thirds.