Inglis House is cutting its licensed beds by 20% to improve the Philadelphia nonprofit’s financial outlook
The nursing home said the beds were unused and making its occupancy rate too low to collect $500,000 a year in Medicaid supplemental payments.
Inglis House nursing home is reducing its count of licensed beds by 50, which the nonprofit’s officials say will giveit a better opportunity to capture more payments from Medicaid.
The number of licensed beds in the facility will fall to 202 from 252 on April 1.
The beds in question have not been used in at least year, said Dyann Roth, president and chief executive of Inglis Foundation, which owns the nursing home for people with physical disabilities and operates accessible apartments. During the pandemic, they were used to isolate people during outbreaks.
The empty beds hurt Inglis House’s finances because occupancy rate was not high enough to collect about $500,000 a year in supplemental Medicaid payments. Those payments are tied to an occupancy rate of at least 85%, Roth said. The facility’s occupancy rate has ranged from 69% to 72% in the last two years, according to data in a letter Roth sent to residents and their families.
“We do not anticipate ever reaching 85% of 252 beds,” Roth said in an interview. “The prevailing winds against placements in long-term skilled nursing facilities, particularly for younger people, are pretty powerful from the federal and state levels.”
The Inglis House Family Council and residents have criticized the decision to relinquish the 50 bed licenses as part of a long-term strategy to reduce its footprint in long-term care. Council members told The Inquirer that Inglis was not doing enough to market itself to families who need the services available at Inglis. The organization traces its roots to 1877 and specializes in caring for people with complex medical needs.
This isn’t the first time the council and residents have pushed back against a board decision and advocated for the preservation of their institution.
In July 2022, the Inglis Foundation board announced its intention to sell the nursing home at 2600 Belmont Ave. in West Philadelphia to a for-profit firm from New Jersey, citing years of substantial losses that threatened to deplete the organization’s endowment that was worth about $240 million at the time.
A resident and a donor challenged the sale in court because of fears that some of the endowment funds would be used to support the proposed for-profit owner. The Inglis board decided to cancel the sale after the facility received a bigger-than-expected increase in Medicaid rates in early 2023.
That increase didn’t solve the financial problems at Inglis House, Roth said last week, but it did give the organization more time to figure out how to achieve financial sustainability in the nursing facility, so that institutional option remains available to families, she said.
Inglis House’s Medicaid financial report for fiscal 2024 is not yet available. In fiscal 2023, Inglis House reported a nearly $10 million loss on $42 million in annual revenue.