She emphasized that Gracedale is one of the county’s largest and most significant assets, consisting of 688 certified beds. Its budget requires a census of 525 residents to break even, But curerently, and despite claims made several times by Administrator Michelle Mortin that this would improve, current occupancy is only 484–492. It has actually decreased. Despite this impending financial loss, she describes the home as an essential safety-net facility.
She told Council that Gracedale is currently operating under a fragmented leadership model. The Director of Human Services is responsible not only for Gracedale but also for multiple other departments, limiting the ability to provide focused, strategic oversight. According to Zrinski, this results in slower decision-making, reduced accountability, and insufficient long-term planning for a facility of this size and complexity.
To address this gap, she proposes the creation of a new leadership structure consisting of a Director of Continuum of Care and a Deputy Director. The Director would operate at a strategic level, overseeing long-term planning, financial sustainability, capital needs, and coordination with county leadership and external partners. The Deputy Director would focus more directly on financial oversight, reimbursement optimization, relationship-building, and implementation of strategic initiatives.
Zrinski stressed that these roles would not replace or duplicate the responsibilities of the nursing home administrator or existing staff. Instead, the administrator and assistant administrator would remain focused on daily operations, staffing, compliance, and resident care, while the new leadership positions would address higher-level strategic and financial challenges. She argued that this separation is necessary to improve both operational effectiveness and long-term outcomes.
She also outlined several anticipated benefits of the proposal. These include reducing reliance on agency staffing by an estimated 10 to 20 percent, improving financial performance through better Medicaid reimbursement capture and advocacy, increasing access to grants and partnerships, and enabling long-term modernization of the facility. She described this restructuring as the first step in a broader vision to transform Gracedale into a more comprehensive continuum of care, potentially expanding services to better meet the needs of a changing and more medically complex population.
In response to Councilman Dave Holland’s questions, Zrinski confirmed that the new leadership roles would play a direct role in reducing agency staffing costs by focusing on recruitment strategies, building partnerships with other facilities, and dedicating time to workforce development efforts that current leadership cannot fully pursue. She emphasized that these efforts require sustained attention and relationship-building, which is not feasible under the current structure.
Holland noted that this might be nothing more than a duplication of what already exists, but Zrinski insists that the proposed positions are fundamentally different in scope, focusing on strategic planning, financial oversight, and system-wide coordination rather than day-to-day operations. She further explained that nursing home finance is highly specialized, particularly given the county’s heavy reliance on Medicaid and the long delays in reimbursement, and that current staffing does not provide sufficient capacity to manage these complexities effectively.
Zrinski reiterated that the proposed structure is just the beginning of a larger transformation. She emphasized the need for leadership capacity to pursue external partnerships, advocate at the state level, improve reimbursement processes, and even rebuild philanthropic support, which she noted has declined over time. She argued that without this level of focused leadership, the county risks continued financial losses and the potential erosion of a critical public asset.
According to Zrinski, Cedarbrook has a similar Director.
25 comments:
Please, no more government bureaucrats. Taxpayers are tapped out. Address this need with people already in position.
While nursing homes are a necessary safety net, county ownership is not. What was the 2025 operating deficit Tara?
Holland was correct, this is nothing more than adding more nouns and adjectives to existing verbiage and is not functioning properly. She needs to get a real Nursing Home Management team, or fail.
N mention of what the cost are for these two new positions. Throwing good money after bad.
OMG! Can someone please make her stop? I think even David Holland is seeing what he’s gotten into trying to deal with her. You can’t make people work at Gracedale as you can’t make people want to live at Gracedale. The problems there were identified awhile ago but no one would do anything about it. Now that it’s a one star facility with an abuse rating and provisional license, Tara thinks she has the answers but she had none so will someone please take her aside so no more time or money is wasted on this crap?
Is anyone surprised that the Exec’s proposal for Gracedale includes more top-end administrators. That will help the bottom line - more government!
The solution is always to spend more money. It just HAS to work this time!
Fool's errand
In the real world if you do not preform you get fired. It seems that gracedale already has tremendous bloat and people are clearly not doing their Jobs. Instead of asking for results what does Northampton county do create two new positions both over 100k! Why isn’t council asking what happens if this fails? The current director is smart as this creates another buffer to isolate herself from the down world spiral.
In the business world, we are told to do more with less. In government, if people complain the government just hires more people. This is just like the school districts. Easton is a perfect example. And then what do they do, raise taxes and screw seniors and the middle class. Listening to Tara is mind boggling. She talks in circles, has to rely on others to explain things, and keeps chewing her gum. She is so unprofessional regardless of what Bernie says. Holland seems like a level headed businessman. He had all the right questions and Tara had all the wrong answers. Tara’s answer is more bloated top heavy administrative jobs. She said these new positions will make things better. Well, that tells us you don’t have the right people in place to do that job. Those people get fired. She said there will be saving eventually between $300,000- $1,000,000. That’s some range. Kraft said he supports it, of course he does. He should listen to Holland who knows all about Gracedale then Tara does. She is in way over her head and the county residents are going to pay the price for it, but then again, they voted for it. I wonder if she takes this serious. Everything seems to be a joke. She makes a comment if council is done I can sing and dance now and Kraft says tap dance, so she walks away pretending to tap dance. Is this a leader? At least McClure was very professional and businesslike. You can’t help but look at her, listen to her and think she’s not fit for this position. Her red hair fits her well, she’s a clown. 🤡
YOU NEED CNAs AND NURSES. Hands on staff not office administrators. I think David Holland was trying to make this point.
More bureaucracy that’s the answer!
Address the immediate issue, Tara’, find the successful nursing homes and find out who or how to get a real management team to fix Gracedale ……or prepare to own its failure.
Tara is comparing Gracedale to Cedarbrook because they are both county homes. Any similarities end there.What were the results of the mock survey?
Government nursing homes are at a disadvantage to the NUMEROUS private facilities that exist.
As a government facility, they are subject to conflicting interests (patient care vs union realities), slow in decision making (private facilities are evaluating the effects of their changes by the time a government facility’s change proposal gets its second reading), and inevitably become top-heavy bureaucracies.
County nursing homes are relics of the past, when private homes did not exist. Today, they actually end up subsidizing the private homes by relieving them of having to care for a fraction of the poor as they are legally obligated to when no other option exists. Instead, the poor all go to the county home, putting an enormous strain on taxpayers.
Northampton and Lehigh are among a handful of counties that still have government-run homes. Yet in those counties where the government homes have been closed, somehow you never hear about the horror stories of people with nowhere to go that are always promised when there is talk of shutting a facility down.
The only reason that government homes still exist in Northampton or Lehigh is because of politicians buying the votes of county employees with taxpayer dollars. There is no justification for continuing to lose even more money by adding additional bureaucrats.
As a long term director of nursing in a large county home i can with experience say this is a typical and terrible idea. They do not need more oversight. They do need stable staffing and open minds in the county for long term planning. But first they need to listen to experts on the best way to handle their present situation. It is definitely not with more high level staff to interfere. Likely to be these two positions would be political position to friends with no experience and destined to fail.
I saw this space documentary once were some supernatural being who was part of a Continuum gave some dude named Jean-Luc Picard nothing but trouble. We don't need that in the county.
so the real answer is to sell sell sell.
Cedarbrook most likely isn’t in the red by millions of dollars with agency staffing, they prob do well enough to justify the position. Not the same boat in Northampton county.
I want to know about the lehigh county position
Chances are Tara has no idea where Cedar Brook is, or , how it operates. She had best do her due diligence on Gracedale’s.
This is total nonsense and an absolute waste of valuable resources. First, get Sue Whateverhernameis out of that position immediately along with her minions who together, don’t know crap.
Hire someone who knows how to manage and knows what they are doing. I am going to eat my words but what about Jason Boulette’s wife? Can she hire and manage the right people in DHS?
The Director of Human Services has a front line Casework Supervisor working three floors down, making almost twice as much money, doing union work, and running circles around her. And she doesn’t even know it. Get her out of there.
Unfortunately, do to lack of sincere interest in righting the Gracedale situation, the County Executive and Council will be held accountable for future fines and eventual failure.
David Holland tried to speak to the idea of selling some Medicaid beds. This idea was put into action under the previous Premier management of Gracedale and it was a success. I saw that immediately that idea was “shot down”. If Sue is overwhelmed, she should resign. She and her apparent sorority sister, Tara, probably meet for hours wringing their hands since they won’t listen to anyone. So - hire a management company to operate Gracedale and sell about 100-150
beds. That’ll relieve the need to pay to license those vacant beds and there’ll hopefully be people who know how to operate a nursing home in place. You must rise from the abuse rating and the one star rating by working to make the facility a place that people want to live in or go to
for rehabilitation. Gracedale only apparently admits those with no choices. Not a good situation.
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