Re: "Future of nursing home chain with two Collier facilities remains unclear."

On Aug. 16, the Daily News ran a story about the national nursing home chain, National HealthCare Corp. (NHC), losing its insurance coverage in Florida. The article went on to infer that they were losing their coverage because families were too aggressive in enforcing their rights.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let's consider some indisputable facts:

• The insurance carrier in question, Caliber One, has not singled out Florida — they are pulling out of the nursing home business nationally.
• NHC's own 10-K405 report filed in March 2000 states, quite clearly, that Caliber One is dropping coverage "in all states" not just Florida. (And while the same report cites Florida as a concern, only a small percentage of NHC's business is even in Florida.)
• To date, not a single insurance carrier has selectively pulled out of Florida. Most are refusing to cover the for-profit chains all across America.

The major nursing home chains are in deep financial trouble for two specific reasons:

1. They engaged in lavish spending and an uncontrolled buying spree in the early 1990s. (Even Naples' own Robert Elkins with IHS, another nursing home chain, was cited in the May 1999 Forbes magazine as the most overpaid executive in America.)

2. They engaged in widespread fraud and mismanagement (as chronicled in a 1995 GAO report to Congress) that resulted in the broad-reaching fraud reduction measures in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. (The federal government has since recovered hundreds of millions of dollars that nursing home corporations stole from taxpayers.)

NHC wants to point the finger away from its own troubles and at the families who seek justice in our courts. NHC doesn't like to point to the fact that (according to their own statements filed under oath) they are a target of a federal investigation and have been accused of fraudulently misallocating funds. Nor do they mention that they are suing at least one of their insurance carriers — an action that would certainly have a chilling effect on any business relationship.

The sad fact is that NHC's problems are not unusual. These problems are plaguing an entire industry that has, by all accounts, outlived its usefulness.

Isn't it time we accept the fact that warehousing the elderly in institutional settings is a failed experiment? Care is terrible — and getting worse — and not a single credible study disputes that.

We must begin the process of moving away from our singular dependence on skilled nursing facilities and offer families real options when it comes to long-term care. We need to shift away from institutional settings as the primary option and towards community-based care systems, adult foster care, home help programs and other such proven concepts.

We can save taxpayers money, allow seniors to age with dignity and make institutionalized nursing care an option of last resort.

Jim Wilkes is co-founder of the Tampa-based law firm Wilkes & McHugh, P.A., which represents nursing home residents who have been abused or neglected.

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