LAUREL \u2014 Although it took 74-year-old Linda Lund time to come around to Hillcrest Care Center and Assisted Living, she eventually insisted it was home.<\/p>\n
Lund, who has dementia, became attached to the city-owned nursing home and the people in it after adjusting, said her daughter Brenda Anderson.<\/p>\n
Lund grew up in Laurel and knew many of the Hillcrest residents who occupied its 36 beds. When going on trips outside the home, she would insist on being back by 6 p.m., her daughter said.<\/p>\n
The rural nursing home\u2019s closure in April, one of 17 in the state in the past four years, forced Lund to move to a nearby facility in a different town, again starting the process of acclimating to a new environment \u2014 this time around strangers.<\/p>\n
Months later, she still mainly stays in her room.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re back to square one again trying to get her motivated,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n
Lund and other former Hillcrest residents became collateral damage of months of conflict between the former staff and the city. At the heart of it: The facility\u2019s former administrator, Megan Wieck.<\/p>\n
The Flatwater Free Press spoke with five former Hillcrest employees and three members of the former advisory board. They allege Wieck mismanaged Hillcrest\u2019s finances and created a toxic environment that triggered mass resignations before the closure.<\/p>\n
In October, the Nebraska Attorney General\u2019s Office filed a complaint seeking disciplinary action against Wieck. It said, among other allegations, that Wieck failed to investigate a case of alleged abuse at Hillcrest and that she failed to properly manage a now-shuttered care center in Ponca.<\/p>\n
Wieck declined to comment to the Flatwater Free Press.<\/p>\n
City leaders have said they went to great lengths to stave off Hillcrest\u2019s closure, taking out multiple lines of credit to keep it afloat. The mass departure of staff members early in the year forced the city\u2019s hand, they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough the whole process, every morning we got up and the primary purpose was to do what we could for the residents, to have the care be the best it could be,\u201d said Laurel Mayor Keith Knudsen during a brief interview following a city council meeting in August.<\/p>\n
But some former staff members said the city, particularly Knudsen, failed to provide proper oversight and listen to concerns about Wieck.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis man and this woman didn\u2019t care, and made it clear that they didn\u2019t care, and completely destroyed it,\u201d said Wendy Krie, a former restorative therapy nurse at Hillcrest.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeceit and awfulness\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Wieck started managing Hillcrest on a part-time basis in June 2022. At the time, she also worked part time at Elms Health Care Center, an unaffiliated nursing home roughly 25 miles away in Ponca. She continued working at Elms until June 2023. It closed five months later.<\/p>\n In 2024, Krie said she examined documents submitted to the state after Hillcrest families asked about rising monthly costs.<\/p>\n Krie alleges Wieck, without the appropriate qualifications, altered residents\u2019 nutritional documents. She then had nurses sign them, which led to new diagnoses from doctors, such as signs of malnutrition, and ultimately raised the residents\u2019 care costs.<\/p>\n Katie Kvols, Hillcrest\u2019s former director of nursing, said that eventually, nurses stopped signing for Wieck after Kvols and Krie informed them of Wieck\u2019s alleged alterations. When Wieck caught on that they knew, she stopped adjusting the documents, Kvols said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were afraid of saying no to (Wieck), because then you had a target on your back,\u201d Kvols said of Hillcrest\u2019s nurses, \u201cand you didn’t want a target on your back.\u201d<\/p>\n The city council and the mayor ignored staff\u2019s attempts to tell them what Wieck was doing, Kvols said.<\/p>\n The nutritional documents were part of larger assessments submitted to the state through MDS Solutions, a Tennessee-based company Wieck hired after starting at Hillcrest. Krie said that work previously had been among her responsibilities.<\/p>\n MDS Solutions was one of several ways that Wieck wasted money, former staff members told Flatwater. According to Hillcrest\u2019s cost reports, the city paid about $3,000 to $5,000 each month to the company.<\/p>\n Dan Kuhlman, Laurel\u2019s city administrator and economic development coordinator, said Hillcrest hired MDS Solutions because reports were being submitted incorrectly. However, the problems persisted even after bringing in MDS, Kuhlman said.<\/p>\n Financial documents dating back to 2023 show Hillcrest\u2019s money woes continued to worsen.<\/p>\n Marsha Meier, the former business office manager, said Wieck started directing her to write checks to vendors for amounts the nursing home didn\u2019t have in its bank account, hoping that it would have enough money by the time the vendor cashed the check.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is not good business practice,\u201d Meier said. \u201cThat is just deceit and awfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2023, roughly a year after Wieck\u2019s hiring, concerned staff members approached members of the center\u2019s advisory board, an appointed body meant to advise Wieck and the city council. Advisory board members suggested the employees bring their concerns to a board meeting \u2014 meetings that Wieck attended. Many chose not to for fear of retaliation, one board member told Flatwater.<\/p>\n About a year later, the city council unanimously voted to dissolve Hillcrest\u2019s advisory board. Kuhlman said this was to eliminate the middleman in financial updates.<\/p>\n Multiple former staff members told Flatwater they believe the council eliminated the board because it started to question Wieck\u2019s handling of Hillcrest\u2019s finances.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seemed like anything that Megan wanted, Keith (the mayor) would do, or let her do,\u201d said Deanna McCoy, a former medication aide at Hillcrest.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Wieck\u2019s management was contributing to a hostile environment in Hillcrest, former staff members allege. Wieck had hired several staff members from the Ponca center after it closed in 2023. According to former employees, she threatened to fire any Hillcrest staffers who disrespected their new co-workers.<\/p>\n Former staff members also allege Wieck failed to follow internal policies, such as guidelines for holiday pay. The city council approved a policy in 2024 adding two paid holidays for permanent Hillcrest employees. But Wieck told the employees that only upper-level management would receive paid holidays.<\/p>\n In April, the Nebraska Department of Labor determined that the City of Laurel had to pay eight Hillcrest employees because the nursing home had shorted them on holiday pay. Danita Hanson, one of the eight, said multiple others refused to file wage complaints for fear of retaliation from Wieck.<\/p>\n Everything \u2018snowballed\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n By December 2024, staff members grew so concerned with the state of Hillcrest\u2019s finances and what they viewed as inaction by the city that they posted flyers urging people to save the home. They included a financial report showing the center was nearly $430,000 in debt.<\/p>\n At the January city council meeting, the mayor denounced their claim, saying the documents provided only half the picture. Hillcrest was not in imminent danger of closing, Knudsen said.<\/p>\n In analyzing financial documents, the Flatwater Free Press found that Hillcrest\u2019s expenses outpaced its revenue for most of 2023 and almost the entirety of 2024.<\/p>\n Also in January, the council renewed a $500,000 line of credit \u2014 essentially a loan \u2014 for Hillcrest\u2019s payroll, one of at least three lines of credit the city received via Security Bank. Knudsen is the president of Security Bank.<\/p>\n Some staff and community members questioned whether Knudsen\u2019s dual roles posed a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n \u201c(Wieck) was making bad financial decisions, continuing to drive the facility into debt,\u201d Meier said. \u201cAnd the mayor\/president of Security Bank continued to give her money and more money without holding her accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n After briefly speaking with a Flatwater reporter following an August city council meeting, Knudsen did not respond to eight emails and eight phone calls requesting further comment.<\/p>\n Kuhlman said the city\u2019s mayor had been involved in the processing and signed paperwork on behalf of the city until January, when, according to city council meeting minutes, the council president took over.<\/p>\n Knudsen didn\u2019t vote with the council to approve any lines of credit, except once in 2023 when there otherwise wouldn\u2019t have been enough council members for a quorum.<\/p>\n Gavin Geis, executive director of Common Cause Nebraska, said this case doesn\u2019t fit the legal definition of a conflict of interest set out in Nebraska law. However, public distrust can still arise if a community sees an elected official\u2019s involvement in something as problematic or not transparent, he said.<\/p>\n Feeling ignored in January, staff then circulated an informal petition to remove Wieck, gathering more than 200 signatures. When it failed to spur action, resignations flooded in.<\/p>\n In March, Wieck resigned as the administrator, a move the city said was mutually agreed upon.<\/p>\n Days earlier, the city council unanimously voted to close Hillcrest, the town\u2019s second-largest employer, giving staff 60 days to move all residents out.<\/p>\n The city\u2019s private auditors had warned of the nursing home\u2019s financial decline since 2022, Kuhlman said, but the public pressure and staff resignations that occurred after January \u201csnowballed\u201d and ultimately led to its downfall.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was not on anybody\u2019s mind that the place was going to close in three months,\u201d Kuhlman said of the statements made at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n By April, the last resident had been moved out.<\/p>\n In October, the Nebraska attorney general filed a petition for disciplinary action against Wieck. Most of the allegations stem from Wieck\u2019s two years running Elms Health Care Center in Ponca.<\/p>\n According to the petition, Wieck hired a person with no financial management experience to serve as the business manager at Elms. Wieck agreed to train the employee but never did. In the case of one patient, this resulted in more than $35,848 in lost revenue because the business manager did not bill Medicare and Medicaid.<\/p>\n Vendors went unpaid, resulting in trash removal and other services being cut off. Elms faced $34,890 in penalties for failing to pay federal unemployment insurance taxes, according to the petition.<\/p>\n Wieck charged $28,000 to the owner\u2019s credit card for facility purchases and failed to pay off the balance, according to the petition. She also allegedly allowed staff to max out the business credit card.<\/p>\n When she resigned from Elms, Wieck allegedly paid herself for two years’ worth of paid time off, totaling $6,540, despite having taken \u201csubstantial time off while receiving her full salary,\u201d according to the petition.<\/p>\n Along with documenting the incident at Hillcrest in which Wieck failed to properly pay employees’ holiday pay, the petition asserts that Wieck learned that a resident was allegedly abused by an employee and failed to investigate or report it.<\/p>\n The allegation was detailed in a January report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A nursing assistant allegedly held a washcloth over a resident\u2019s mouth in August 2024. The resident had severely impaired cognitive skills and required extensive assistance with basic functions, according to the report.<\/p>\n Wieck and others told HHS they learned of the incident in January but never reported it.<\/p>\n The petition does not specify what disciplinary actions the state is seeking for the \u201cgross incompetence\u201d and \u201cunprofessional conduct\u201d alleged in the document. A spokeswoman with the Nebraska Attorney General\u2019s Office declined to comment.<\/p>\n Even under better circumstances, rural nursing homes in Nebraska have faced mounting challenges in recent years. Sixteen other rural Nebraska nursing homes have closed in the past four years, according to data published by the Nebraska Health Care Association.<\/p>\n Jalene Carpenter, the president of the association, attributed these closures to a declining workforce, shrinking nursing home populations, chronic underfunding and unrealistic federal requirements.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is incredibly difficult to operate a nursing home with all of the regulations in a rural setting, because you’re having to meet what people in Baltimore, Maryland, think \u2026 is appropriate when they don’t understand what it means to take care of 28 people,\u201d Carpenter said.<\/p>\n Currently, the City of Laurel owes Security Bank more than $1 million for the lines of credit. Kuhlman said the city is hopeful future IRS tax credits will be enough to pay off the smallest of them.<\/p>\n As of November, the city council has the facility listed for sale for about $600,000. It plans to sell equipment and personal property through an auction in December. Any proceeds from the sale of the building and equipment will go toward unpaid bills, which totaled over $60,000 as of late September, as well as outstanding lines of credit.<\/p>\n If the sale doesn\u2019t cover the remaining balance of the loans, the city will \u201cneed to look into some longer-term payback arrangements,\u201d Kuhlman said in an email.<\/p>\n Wieck has an administrative hearing scheduled Monday, Dec. 8, to determine if the state will take disciplinary action against her.<\/p>\n Brenda Anderson can no longer pop in to visit her mother on her way home from work. The new, more expensive facility where her mother now lives is about 12 miles north of Laurel. Her mother isn\u2019t concerned anymore about rushing back from trips outside her new home.<\/p>\n \u201c(I\u2019m) sad she doesn\u2019t say, \u2018I better get home now, they will be worried about me,\u2019 \u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska\u2019s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAUREL \u2014 Although it took 74-year-old Linda Lund time to come around to Hillcrest Care Center and Assisted…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":401859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[871,210,1141,1142,61809,125427,27503,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-401858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-credit-card","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-health-care","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-medicare-united-states","13":"tag-nursing-home","14":"tag-social-programs","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115606101864097206","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}