EVANSTON — Uinta Senior Citizens, Inc. (USCI), is not closing. Executive Director Amy Kelly and Community Liaison Aimee Ottley spoke with the Herald and said they wanted to squelch some rumors and confirm others, and the fact that the senior center will remain open and will not be closing puts to rest at least one of those rumors. 

“We’ve been here 45 years and we don’t plan on leaving any time soon,” said Ottley. 

However, Kelly and Ottley did confirm another rumor, namely that the home health portion of USCI will no longer be accepting Medicare payment for home health services, beginning in early May. 

Kelly said, “We have decided to voluntarily give up Medicare accreditation for home health services.” Kelly said the decision was reached because of recent updates to Medicare policies and procedures, including requirements that Kelly said are problematic for small centers like USCI to meet.

For example, Kelly and Ottley said federal Medicare requirements include having both a health care administrator and a back-up health care administrator, as well as a director of nursing and a back-up director of nursing. “Larger centers can absorb the costs of having all of those, but we can’t,” said Kelly. 

In addition to the staffing requirements, Medicare accreditation requires extensive emergency management planning.

“We’re actually required to have a hurricane emergency plan and hurricane drills, even though that would obviously never happen here,” Kelly said.

The two said the home health portion of the many services, including Meals on Wheels, transportation, and in-home services, provided under the umbrella of USCI is still going to be in business and still be licensed with the State of Wyoming; however, they will no longer accept Medicare as a form of payment. 

Ottley and Kelly stressed, however, that they are not simply abandoning patients.

“Most of them have already been transitioned to other programs we have to provide those services,” said Kelly.

They said they believe there are very few Medicare patients who will not be able to be transitioned to other programs with USCI, and they will be working with those patients to transition them to other home health agencies in the community. 

They also stressed they will still be accepting private insurance and private payment for home health services and that there are multiple other programs that may cover the service provision for some clients. 

“The senior center used to be all things to all people,” said Kelly. “We used to be the only home health and hospice provider. Now there are other larger companies that do that, and we don’t have to be all things to all people anymore.”

The two said all the local home health agencies work together regularly for case management and service provision so relationships are already established to ensure care is provided for clients. 

Kelly said the dream is to eventually be able to once again have Medicare accreditation and provide hospice services, but, at least for right now, they feel this decision is the right one to make.

“We’ve had to do a lot of restructuring over the last couple of years,” she said. “In many ways we feel like a brand-new company. We need to have a solid foundation to build on to continue to move forward.”

The solid foundation will be important moving forward, they said, since Kelly took the opportunity to confirm another rumor — she will be retiring this summer and USCI is looking for a new executive director.

“I’m staying until we can find the right person to come in and until that person is comfortable,” she said. “Now the foundation is set for that smooth transition.”

They said they are looking for a long-term person who is part of the community and wants to be here.

“I’ll still be involved in volunteering, but I’m retiring,” said Kelly. 

The restructuring Kelly and Ottley referred to was necessary following the departure of Sarah Blakeman, former executive director, who has been under federal investigation for alleged misuse of funds. Ottley and Kelly stressed that investigation is still ongoing. 

“People sometimes think the whole incident has been dropped, and that’s not the case,” said Ottley. 

Ottley said she wants to make sure the community knows how much work has been done to recover from the incident with Blakeman.

“Amy has done an outstanding job leading us out of the mess and scandal of two years ago,” she said. “She has worked countless hours and found the necessary resources when many were lost to us.” 

“It’s taken a lot of hard work to get things going again after that,” said Kelly. “But we’ve got that solid foundation now.” She added, “This is an amazing organization. We wouldn’t have been here for 45 years if we weren’t.”