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It was troubling and yet not expected to read this morning about the issues Loretto is having with its finances. Any time you have to bring in an outside consulting firm (once again, a company went outside to find something instead of using qualified consultants living in the area) to help them find money, which indirectly means they’ve brought in hatchet people to look for positions to cut.

For those who don’t know, Loretto is a nursing home facility, although these days they’re all trying to change their image by calling themselves long term care providers. It’s a not-for-profit organization which means it’s beholden to the community and not anyone on Wall Street, and all profits are supposed to go back into the facility. It relies mainly on Medicaid money to survive and unfortunately, those in Albany could care less about either the aged or the disabled (or pretty much anyone else in the state that relies on Medicaid money) and thus the lament of facilities like Loretto, which is uber large by any normal nursing home standards.

The problem with Loretto and most other nursing homes is twofold. One, it’s an industry that’s often mismanaged, though it’s not totally their fault, because of the oppressive state regulations they have to follow to get the money that they do get. True, regulations are in place supposedly to make sure the residents are cared for properly, but they’re really not.

That’s because of the second problem; not enough workers to take care of the needs of the residents. I don’t say this as a health care consultant, which I am; I say this as a person who knew someone who was a resident in this facility for about 18 months, and someone who had to see my other grandmother’s care at a nursing home in Rochester for 3 months in Rochester last year. I also oversaw the billing of a nursing home in Newark, NY almost 11 years ago and was corporate compliance officer of both the hospital and the nursing home attached to it; I know of what I speak.

Some may not like this but the real heroes of nursing homes are CNAs, or certified nursing assistants. It’s one of the hardest positions to handle in the country, as well as poorly paid for what they do. If you have an impression that the elderly are quiet and sedate and would mind their manners, you’d be sadly mistaken. Those who end up in nursing homes do so because they can’t take care of themselves. Some have dementia issues; some can barely more. Many are needy and their families don’t visit them all that often.

he people who are more direct with them than anyone else, including doctors and nurses, are CNAs. It’s physically a tough job. They have to lift and move while being careful not to hurt themselves. They have to try to help them use the bathroom and clean up all messes. They often have to feed and push and pull and help put on and take off clothes of residents. And they have to sometimes put up with verbal and physical abuse from these residents, some of whom aren’t sure what it is they’re doing, and aren’t allowed to retaliate. I could probably tell stories, and I’m sure they can as well, but they’re not allowed to; I’ll tell one.

Once I visited my wife’s friend that was in Loretto. When I got on the floor, the area was literally flooded with senior citizens, there was no one at the front desk, no one in what I thought was the lunch area, and residents either sitting around in wheelchairs or walking around, very slowly, but unwatched. A few of them asked me for water, which I was ready to go get until my wife told me I’m not allowed because I didn’t know their medical conditions and maybe they weren’t allowed water. That was sad. The same condition permeated when I left; still no one around, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d later heard that a resident had figured out the elevator, gone down, and walked out, never to be seen again. It didn’t happen though.

Job cuts, eh? Who will they cut? There aren’t enough CNAs now, no matter what the bean counters say. If there aren’t enough CNAs then there probably aren’t enough nurses. If there aren’t enough nurses then there probably aren’t enough doctors. You never, and I mean NEVER, cut billing staff, the people who bring in your money, unless they’re incompetent, but maybe you outsource outstanding receivables to a cash acceleration company if there is a problem. Maybe you cut administrative positions; I don’t know, and I don’t know how many people they have. How many positions would they have to cut to reach $784,000 and still have enough leadership to run the place? For that matter how much did they pay an outside consulting firm to come from Philadelphia & pay for all expenses when there are consultants in town that probably could have helped them? I’m just saying…

Loretto and other nursing homes in the central New York area have some big and tough decisions to make. The baby boomer population is a large one, so this is an issue that’s not going away any time soon. Maybe it’s time to lobby Albany for some assistance. Maybe it’s time for some radical thinking; who knows. I know this; as one of the last round of baby boomers, with no kids to rely on to help me if I make it that far, I fear for my future.  

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell

This isn’t necessarily a post about Syracuse or Central New York, but it is something that concerns us, as well as other cold areas. I’ve just finished conducting an experiment that has confirmed what I should have already known, but didn’t. Hopefully, this will help you save money as well.

You see that heater to the right? That and its twin were the experiment my wife and I decided to try. The explanation is that we got a National Grid bill at the beginning of January that was a little higher than I was expecting; okay, it was a lot higher than I was expecting. We have a house that’s more than 50 years old and parts of it aren’t insulated properly. I hate to “out” companies per se but we had ZeroDraft come into the house some years ago to insulate, which they did, but they did what their name says and took care of the drafts. We have cold coming from other areas, and that wasn’t their purview.

Anyway, my wife and I decided to try an experiment. We decided to turn the temperature down about 4 degrees from where we’d been keeping it and around 9 at night turn on electric heaters to only heat up the spaces we were in. Those heaters would run until we each were ready for our “business” day, which means for her around 5:15 in the morning (she gets ready in a different area of the house) and for me 9AM. I work from home, but felt that I could handle the temperature during the day by wearing more clothes.

Except for a couple of days when the temperature outside fell to around 0°, we stuck with this plan for the entire month of January. I expected that our next bill would be lower because we weren’t heating the entire house, and we didn’t change any of our other behaviors.

Stunned and shocked would be my response when I opened my bill yesterday. It was the highest bill we’ve ever had in this house, over $500. When I looked at use of resources we showed a decrease in gas but a major jump in electric. The delivery services for electricity was around 150% higher than for gas, and almost 100% higher for the supply services.

The problem with evaluating things like this is that the language for each is different. Electricity comes at you in kWh (kilowatt hours) while gas comes to you in therms. I never studied this kind of measurement in school, but when you look at it from a numbers perspective it seems like 0.1152 per kWh would be lower than .886 per therm; no sir, it doesn’t work quite that way.

Another problem of course is the power company themselves. I had called them to ask the difference in electricity and gas and which one was more cost efficient and the response I got was “it depends on how you use it”, without any further explanation. I’m not sure anyone would know what that means, but for my experiment it seems to mean that gas works better for me than electricity based on how I use it.

Definitely disappointing but a major lesson learned. How many of you already knew this, and what measures do you take to try to keep your heating bills lower?  

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell

It’s amazing that I haven’t previously written about Pier 57 at 7376 Oswego Road in Liverpool, which has become one of my favorite restaurants in the area, but I did include them in one of my earliest posts when I was talking about best pizza in Liverpool. Since it’s a restaurant I go to at least once a week, most of the time twice a week, I figured it was about time to talk about them here.

Last year I decided I needed to find another restaurant that I could go to where the people knew me when I came in and pretty much knew what I wanted to get. I already had Friendly’s, but I don’t really consider that as a restaurant as much as… well, I’m not quite sure what to call it. I guess I’d have to say the atmosphere is much different, the desserts are much more dangerous, and thus I force myself not to go there as often.

I decided on Pier 57 because I loved the atmosphere and I had always enjoyed my meals there. What finally sold me was the pizza that I mentioned before, which is a very thin pizza that, for the most part, they cook perfectly every time I go. When they don’t, they always take it back, and actually it’s gotten to the point where the waitstaff there already knows what I won’t eat and won’t even bring it out; that’s the type of service I wanted.

I’ve talked about the pizza enough but that’s not all they have that I like. I’m in love with their chicken and biscuits special, which also comes with mashed potatoes and gravy. It’s not always on the menu unfortunately but when it is, I’m in love.

There’s also their friend haddock and french fries, which is wonderful and is my wife’s favorite meal when she decides to go with me. It’s never overcooked and it’s a very sizable portion, even at lunch.

Overall, it’s a warm atmosphere, the people working there are wonderful, and as a regular I’ve started to meet some other regulars, one of whom I convinced to try the pizza. They also have a bar and a large room for different functions, as I once went to a Liverpool Chamber luncheon there. That room easily fits 50 people, although the day I was in there we had close to 75 people and we fit, but it wasn’t overly comfortable at that point.

So there you have it, one of my favorite restaurants, and as I put out on Twitter often, I go for lunch a lot. Oh, did I mention the nutter butter peanut butter pie? Anyone is invited to join me there for lunch when I go, and if you don’t come, I guess I’ll just have to keep reading.  

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell

I read with some disappointment but no shock whatsoever Matt Mulcahy’s blog post a couple of days ago regarding the reaction to a story on a Skaneateles athlete of color named Khiary Gayle, whose family filed a civil rights action against the school because, though qualified, he was left off the team because he supposedly “didn’t grow up here, this team is about home-grown players.” That was the stated quote from the coach of the basketball team.

As you can imagine, much of the reaction is going against this young man and his claims, and as I stated earlier, I’m not surprised at all. After all, I had a similar thing happen to me back in 1977 at my local high school.

A brief background history; I’m not originally from central New York. I’m a military kid, and I had lived in the Syracuse area from 1966 to 1969, left, and when my dad retired we came back to this area for good. I’d hoped that we would end up in the North Syracuse area, since they were more racially diverse and I figured I would know some of those kids from elementary school (which turned out to be true once I met some of them in college), but instead ended up in Liverpool.

Liverpool High School was a monster back then. With over 3,800 kids, it dwarfed the area that I had come from. It was intimidating for a long while dealing with that many people. I came here as a junior and thought about trying out for the football team, which we didn’t have where I was from, but that first day there were more kids around the school waiting to try out than I could ever remember seeing in one place before and went back home. Just way too overwhelming.

By my senior year I was getting more comfortable, but still not ready by football season to give it a shot. However, I was ready to try out for the baseball team in the second half of my senior year, 1977, as baseball had always been my best sport.

I won’t say I was a phenom, but I was pretty good. I was an outfielder who could throw the ball in the air from deep center field to home plate. I ran a 4.4 in the 40-yard dash; not great but not bad. I could hit from both sides of the plate and though I wasn’t a home run hitter, I was definitely a doubles hitter who stole bases pretty much when I wanted to.

Everyone I knew said that I was going to make the team easily. A few players already on the team told me they knew I was going to make the team. The day the roster for the team went up, I knew I was going to bust a gut when I saw my name on the team roster.

Only it wasn’t there. Other people who looked at the list gasped as well; my name wasn’t anywhere on the list. It was embarrassing.

I went looking for the coach, who asked me into his office. He then proceeded to say that he knew I was better than the outfielders he already had on the team, in particular the person I might have replaced in center field. He then said that the team had won the state championships the year before and he didn’t think it would be fair to pull the guy who was already playing my position and that it wouldn’t be fair to me to be sitting behind someone I knew I was better than. And that was that.

When have you ever heard of a coach not taking a good player because he didn’t want to embarrass another player? Oh by the way, there was one minority on that team already, so I guess the quota had been covered. The kicker is that the conversation was just between this man and myself; what was I going to do about it? How could I even prove that it even happened?

I did tell my dad about it when he got home from work. I think he knew there wasn’t anything we could do either; this wasn’t the military and he couldn’t pull rank. There was no civil rights action I could take. Liverpool High School back then had few black people in it to begin with; for that matter back then there were few black people in Liverpool; it was over for me.

So, do I believe this could be happening in Skaneateles? Definitely. Do I know for a fact that it’s occurred? No, but neither does anyone else. And that’s the problem with these types of things. Racism isn’t always something that’s out in the open, although based on the responses Matt’s column has been getting, it’s out in the open now. People tend to assume that because it’s something that could never happen to them that it can’t happen to anyone else. I’m proof that it can.  

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell

Let me say this; I hate talking about roofs. I’ve hated talking about mine in particular for nearly 11 years.

Before we moved into the house my wife said we should have the roof done, so we went with someone the realtor recommended. They didn’t do a good job as it started leaking with the first big rain, and when we asked the realtor about it she said she didn’t know the work they did, but they had a flyer on the wall so she offered their name. We had them back three times over the next couple of years, and things never got done properly.

Enter the next guy, who said he’d repair our roof, only he did other roof work we weren’t expecting. That was a major mess. Then we had roofer #3 who did a wonderful job with the small portion of roof he did for a lot of money. The 4th roofer we had did only a portion as well, got some things stabilized, but that work didn’t last all that long either.

Finally, we found someone we thought we could trust. He’s married to a young lady I consider as family and he talked to me in a manner that helped me better understand where he was coming from; better as in I know nothing about home improvements so he answered my stupid questions as best he could. My wife is much more savvy so he answered her questions to her satisfaction as well.

Completed Work