Festus nursing home loses Medicare and Medicaid funding

FESTUS, Mo. – The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says it will no longer pay money to Festus Manor because it “failed to attain substantial compliance with certain Medicare and Medicaid participation requirements."

Advocacy group VOYCE is helping residents relocate.

"One of the things we're most concerned about in this closure is that residents have the right to decide where they're going to live next. They know that they can't continue to live where they live, but where do they want to live?" VOYCE executive director Marjorie Moore said.

FOX 2 went to find out what is being done to help residents at the 150-bed facility. We saw workers but the company told us no comment. CMS has not provided more details about which requirements Festus Manor failed to meet but there have been recent issues at the facility.

Government website Medicare.gov gives Festus Manor a one-star rating, saying the facility has been cited for abuse. It says the facility has had 15 complaints in the last three years and received 25 health citations from the most recent inspection and past year of complaints.

Those include failure to ensure a resident was free from physical abuse by another resident, three residents being “exposed during care,” and failure to provide a safe, clean, and comfortable environment.

"This is the fifth facility that we've had that's really focused on behavioral health in the state that's closed over the last 12 months," Moore said.

It is creating a demand for beds in the area.

"We have gotten a lot of calls, specifically within the last few days," Dr. Jannah Oppermann said.

Oppermann owns Senior Care Solutions’ Collin’s House right down the road. It is a small eight-bed nursing home designed for the elderly. She contrasts it to the large nursing homes that might have an elderly population mixed with mental health patients.
Oppermann is currently advocating for more clearly defined regulations.

"Our state, with our regulations and with our fundings under Medicaid, both of those populations right now are being put into the same types of homes," she said.

Oppermann and Moore both say there is a broader problem in the industry with for-profit companies not investing enough into quality care.

"The ownership of a lot of those facilities pull the funds out of those facilities under exuberant rent payments and things like that, pay out to the ownership, but don't necessarily employ the number of workers that are needed," Moore said.

Medicare.gov says Festus Manor has 2 hours and 54 minutes of nurse staff hours per resident each day. That is almost an hour below the national average.

According to the NPI Registry, the facility is owned by Festus MO OPCO LLC, which has a Maryland mailing address. FOX 2 reached out for comment but has not heard back.