USAF colonel speaks at Pioneer Home

Last Wednesday, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Steve Kravitsky, director of the Wyoming Veterans Commission, and Franz Fuchs, the policy analyst for the Wyoming Department of Health, held a meeting at the Wyoming Pioneer Home to gather public input regarding a skilled nursing facility in Wyoming.

Kravitsky emphasized this would be a state veterans home, not a VA run facility. “This is a marathon,” he said, with regard to the development of the facility. “It’s not a sprint. The Wyoming Veterans Commission has been working this concept for about 10 years and we haven’t had a whole lot of success within the Legislature.” In this last session, he noted, the commission was given authority to proceed with a Level 1 and Level 2 study.

As a retired veteran, Kravitsky said having the facility was an important capability for Wyoming. “Every state has one, with the exception of Wyoming,” he said. “That’s not the central argument as to why Wyoming should have one. In my humble opinion the reason we need this capability in the state is because there are benefits for veterans we are leaving on the table, that are not available to them because we do not have this type of facility.”

There is a difference between assisted living facilities, such as the Pioneer Home and Wyoming Retirement Center, and skilled nursing facilities that can provide a higher level of care, Kravitsky said. Right now, if Wyoming had a state veterans skilled nursing facility, the VA would pay a veteran a per diem — currently $106.17 per day or nearly $40,000 per year.

“I have a pension,” Kravitsky said. “I have disability payments, I have a source of income coming in so I would never be able to receive Medicaid. My assets would be depleted before Medicaid would pay out.” The per diem, he said, would go toward skilled nursing, so as not to be a hardship on his family.

“In this state, I can’t go to the state veterans skilled nursing facility — we don’t have one — so I can’t take advantage of that benefit the veterans have earned.” More importantly, he added, if someone is 70 percent or more service-connected disabled as a veteran, the VA pays the entire cost with nothing out of pocket for the person.

Admission requirements into skilled nursing facilities include being an honorably discharged veteran. Though the VA does allow 25 percent of such facilities for non-veteran use, but it must be for veterans’ spouses or members of the “gold star family,” meaning they’ve lost a loved one in the line of duty.

The VA has helped build over 130 state skilled nursing facilities and is looking to do more, Kravitsky said, and recently received an infusion of $635 million in addition to what they already had in a grant program for skilled nursing homes. Through the program, the VA would pay 65 percent of a facility with the state coming up with the remainder. The state would also be responsible for maintenance and make the decision as to whether the facility would be staffed with state employees or contracted workers.

Kravitsky expects to see more infusions into the grant program, to ask states to build these homes.

The goal, Kravitsky said, is to provide facilities that have a higher level of care. “We’re not looking to go out and build an institutionalized type of building.” The retired colonel shared a story of his father, who in the last year of his life was in a more industrialized facility. “What we’re trying to do is more of a greenhouse model,” he said, noting he doesn’t have a preference but wants the veterans to have their benefits.

The Wyoming Veterans Commission is working with the Wyoming Department of Health on this undertaking, and recently the request for qualifications went out from the Building and Construction Department. What that means, Kravitsky said, is requests will be sent out to different contractors to determine if they can do Level 1 and Level 2 studies to do reconnaissance and decide if the facility is even feasible. The Veterans Commission and Department of Health are travelling to different communities to find out what the veterans think.

One of the purposes of the meetings around the state, Kravitsky said, is to determine where a skilled nursing facility could be located. The input they’ve received is people primarily want it in or near their hometowns. The building of the facility is still quite a few years out, however.