By Edward Peeks for The Charleston Gazette

January 1, 2008

It remains to be seen for the new owners of Heartland nursing homes to show and for the public to know that patient care won’t slump from the buyout by the Carlyle Group as predicted by the labor union representing Heartland employees.

The Service Employees International Union District 1199 maintains that new owners will cut staff to increase profits, making good service a casualty of the changeover.

The SEIU’s argument persuaded the West Virginia Health Care Authority to balk at approving the deal. It involves seven nursing homes in the state among 550 in the nationwide buyout from HCR Manor Care Inc. for $6.3 billion.

The authority relented under pressure of holding up the deal at a cost of $1 million a day to shareholders. They include Manor Care shareholders in West Virginia with stock through the state pension fund.

Even so, the authority left a window open to revisit concern “whether elderly people in West Virginia are going to be harmed.”

Taxpayers and investors could be harmed, too, a reader would gather from a Sunday Gazette-Mail story by Gazette business editor Joe Morris.

The story fits the type of “fair and balanced” news touted by Fox News, although there are those who don’t regard Fox’s production to be what it claims.

But truly, the Sunday Gazette-Mail story, by any reasonable measure, stands in the New York Times tradition of gathering and printing news for the public record.

Morris does a bang-up job for the record, giving both sides of the question as to whether “buyout puts nursing home care on trial.”

Lawyers for SEIU offered data during hearings that said a pattern of declining nursing-home care followed such buyouts across the country.

Carlyle Group representatives testified to the contrary, saying good care will be maintained. The new owners will uphold Manor Care’s reputation as a “nursing home paragon.”

Truth be told, nursing homes for profit and nonprofit face growing challenges to maintain quality service. The Carlyle Group’s buyout again raises the question of whether a for-profit operation best serves nursing-home care, with concern first and last for service to patients.

Nobel laureate Milton Friedman said the first obligation of a corporation (for profit) is to make a profit for shareholders. Moreover, standard business practices show that labor gets the knife first in a crunch. The payroll is cut.

The Carlyle Group and other providers might well know and show in the vital nursing home industry that the usual cost-cutting practice is unnecessary and that there are better ways to maintain quality service.

Yet, as the saying goes, seeing is believing. And certainly, words are cheaper than deeds, but deeds count more in labor for good service, in and out of nursing homes. It’s something worth the wish and the watch in the new year.