Scott Brewster said the closure of the nursing home in Butte last month caught him by surprise.
“I don't believe any of us suspected that, you know, and so once they decided, they had already decided. So I don't know if there was any turning back at that point,” said Brewster, the chairman of the village of 300 residents in Boyd County.
The closure, while a blow to the village, was also personal for Brewster.
His father-in-law was a resident at the facility, and when it closed, he had to move to another facility 2 ½ hours away. Just a week after moving, he died.
With the closure of Butte Senior Living, Boyd County became the 22nd county in Nebraska to not have a nursing home.
Butte officials hope to reopen the center, but they’re being stymied by Nebraska’s Certificate of Need Law.
The law is meant to prevent overbuilding of health care facilities by essentially making owners looking to expand existing facilities or build new ones show there is a need for the additional beds.
Butte is not looking to do either, but because the owner who closed the facility refused to sell it to the village, officials there would have to “buy” excess capacity from elsewhere in the state.
“What the certificate of need is doing for us is not allowing us to reopen it, because there are no beds associated with that nursing home," Brewster said. "And we have to purchase those beds."
Brewster said the village was encouraged to not reopen the home. Despite the advice, he said officials want to provide their aging residents with a local place to go, so that their families can continue to see them.
The nearest nursing home is across the border in South Dakota, nearly half an hour away.
“The only thing that we are hoping to do is to break even," Brewster said. "We also realize that we may not be able to break even, and we are prepared and trying to put ourselves in a position where we can withstand those losses. Going forward, this is going to require proper business organization. It's going to require the local people to come forward financially.”
There is a sliver of hope for Butte, however.
A proposed bill, LB437, introduced by Sen. Merv Riepe of Ralston, would repeal the state’s certificate of need requirements, something a dozen other states have done.
The bill has advanced out of committee, but it has yet to be debated by the full Legislature, and it’s not clear if it will be this year.
During that committee hearing in March, Riepe called the certificate of need law “fine in theory.”
“But in actuality, it’s destructive,” he said.
Brewster agrees.
“Certificate of need is detrimental to the state of Nebraska, maybe not necessarily Omaha, Lincoln – that's where the populations are,” he said. “But for the rest of us in the state of Nebraska, we need certificate of need repealed.”