Charles City Meals on Wheels weekend delivery ending

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com 

Meals on Wheels will soon stop delivering on weekends, the first cost-cutting measure as the Floyd County Medical Center continues to look for a new provider in Charles CIty.

The Rev. Dennis Niezwaag, chairman of the Meals on Wheels board of directors, and Rod Nordeng, medical center administrator, sent a message to Meals on Wheels recipients and volunteers, telling them that weekend meals will stop effective Saturday, Nov. 3.

Meals will continue to be provided Monday through Friday for now, but the county hospital has said it cannot continue the program indefinitely, and some other group will need to take over for the service to continue.

Nordeng has explained previously that the medical center is losing from $100,000 to more than $200,000 per year because of its classification as a critical care hospital.

That classification determines how Medicare reimburses the hospital in various expense categories, and in the dietary category the Meals on Wheels program expenses are not reimbursable.

That wouldn’t be an issue if Medicare was just denying the actual costs of the Meals on Wheels program, but it is denying reimbursement based on the percentage of meals the hospital produces that are Meals on Wheels meals.

Because in-hospital special dietary meals have a much higher per-meal cost than the Meals on Wheels meals, the hospital is being denied significantly more reimbursement that it should be, Nordeng has said.

The medical center announced in September that it is looking for a new provider, and Nordeng and Niezwaag said some other group or business that doesn’t have the Medicare reimbursement issue could probably offer the Meals on Wheels service at break-even or even a small profit.

“Another organization has not stepped forward yet to become the provider of Meals on Wheels in Charles City,” Nordeng said in the message last week and verified was still the case Monday evening.

The decision to stop weekend deliveries has been made now because a Floyd County Medical Center dietary employee has recently voluntarily quit and the hospital is working toward a schedule that does not replace that person.

Also, the message said, weekends account for only 16 percent of the meals served.

“Please know that we believe Meals on Wheels is a tremendous program and we are hopeful that another organization will step forward to work with us on its transition. We apologize for this change,” the message to recipients and volunteers said.

Nordeng has declined to put a deadline on when the medical center will stop the Meals on Wheels program entirely if another group doesn’t come forward, but he said the hospital cannot continue to operate it indefinitely while losing large amounts of money.

“From our fiscal years from 2010 through 2017 it cost the medical center over $1.5 million in lost reimbursement,” he said.

Nordeng pledged the hospital’s help in transitioning to a new provider, and said he realizes it might take some months to make the switch.

““But it can’t take years and it can’t take too many months,” he said.