Freedom Living Center in Oklee Closes

On Tuesday, May 12, Rick Dulka, representing the owners of Freedom Living Center, clarified the reason for Freedom Living Center’s closing at the end of May.
The closing took the citizens of Oklee by surprise and many rumors have been heard around town. Here is why the owners reluctantly had to close the doors to their dream of an assisted living home, for Oklee and the surrounding area, at the end of May.
Dulka started out the interview with this statement. “We would like to thank everybody and anybody that had to do with setting the place up. Foremost the residents we had from the beginning, the residents that passed away, to the residents we have now, which I’m sorry we had to relocate.”
The reasoning for the closing is when you run a business like this there are two sources of funding, its called private pay and county pay. When Freedom Living Center started up, there were quite a few that were private pay. The percentage was approximately 80% private pay/20% county pay. When people spend down their private pay, they actually switch over to county pay which is called Elderly Waiver (EW).
An assisted living can charge any price you want for private pay, the sky is the limit, but not below what the EW rate is. At this time, Freedom Living Center percentages of private to county pay is 20% private/80% county. If Freedom Living Center was to raise their prices it wouldn’t have helped the financial situation, because the private pays would leave and then it would all be county pay. And county pay (EW) is set by the state based on needs.
This facility is licensed as an assisted care plus so Freedom Living Center can do more care than an assisted living and the rates should have been higher. The administrator RN and owners have been working with the state for the past two and a half years to get this rate increased. A bed costs $3400 a month private and the EW is only paying $2800 a month, a loss of $600 a month. Without enough revenue to pay the expense, you eventually run out of money.
The EW rate is different from person to person, depending on their needs and will change if a person’s care needs change and it could change in a week’s time, which meant social services would have to come and re-evaluate. The evaluation process can take up to hours and is a lot of paper work.
Over five years ago, when they were building Freedom Living Center, all the counties around were getting rid of nursing home beds as a cost savings, because assisted living is cheaper because you can charge by how much care a person receives instead of a set price of a nursing home bed at approx. $6900 a month. The legislature has cut funding to assisted living, but increased wages to nursing homes for employee wages.
The owners, Rick Dulka, Cliff Melby, Kelly Lundeen and Quiten Nelson built this place for their community, thinking that this would be a great addition to Oklee and the area. If all the rooms were filled, even with county pay, they would have just broken even. It was hard to keep the rooms full. An assisted living facility needs close to a 50/50 of private pay to county pay to succeed. Dulka went on to say, many of the assisted living homes are in trouble, this is not an isolated incident, Bagley is closed and City of McIntosh is looking to sell their assisted living facility.
Dulka went on to say, that a substantial amount of money was pulled in from the owners to help Freedom Living Center over the past two years, hoping that things would change. But without state increasing funding and more private pay residents, it left them no choice but to close the doors.
For a couple of years now, the owners have been talking to the legislators and commissioners to try and help keep Freedom Living Center open. Deb Kiel called Dulka the day a press release stated that nursing homes were receiving increases for wages in nursing homes and told Dulka she was sorry.
Dulka said, “It breaks our heart that we had to close the doors, but we loved what we did and don’t regret building the Freedom Living Center. Without the funding from the state and more private pay, there was no way to continue. “
Dulka wants to thank all the residents, staff, and anyone that helped in any way to make the Freedom Living Center a reality, and thanks the public for coming to their events and anyone who brought joy to the residents, be it students singing, visitors visiting, etc.
The residents are finding new homes with the assistance of the administrator, Karen Bierman, most of the staff have found new jobs, and Dulka and the other owners have helped any way they can to make it a smooth transition.
Dulka leaves us with hope that there may be a new use for the building and promised to try and keep the building a useful asset to the community of Oklee.