RCFE Rant-2

Indian or Vedic Astrology

RCFE (Residential Care Facility for the Elderly) Part 2

Transcribed by Bobby Blueblood

Whose business is it anyway?

There is a big flaw in the RCFE business as I see it. I have a strong bias against the government in a lot of things so if this offends you exit now or read more to find out more about this business. Government is good in some cases, but in others it’s terrible.

In the case of RCFEs (Residential Care Facility for the Elderly) in California it is on the terrible side. Others will see it differently and that’s fine.

Firstly, in my opinion with an RCFE Residential Care Facility for the Elderly, especially a 6-bed or less, the rules, restrictions, and BS are so onerous and unfair. The business, and it is a business, not just a place to care for people, is essentially a business run for the State (my opinion).

You do all the work. They make all the rules. You follow all their rules. You pay all the penalties for not following or obeying all their rules.

 

RCFE

The State of California Controls almost all Aspects of your Business

The State controls almost all aspects of the Residential Care Facility for the Elderly or RCFE business. That includes how much money you need to start it and how many people you can care for. They force you to use their forms for documenting virtually everything.

They force you to get additional licenses if you have more than one location, even if it’s the same business. Time limits of as low as 24 hours to notify them (the State) of any incidents are strictly enforced.

You must tell them how many employees you have (in some cases) and employees have to be approved by the federal Dept. of Justice. You have to tell the state which rooms you use for certain residents.

 

kiss this opportunity

 

All Fixed Rules are Flexible but not for the RCFE Owner

When we started the state specified what kind of locks we needed on our doors. We were forced to pay $300 for a lock in our other facility and $80 for one at our home a few years before. You’re forced to have an outside door in certain kinds of situations, and on and on and on. Some RCFEs never had to change their locks.

We had to widen our doors. They were approved by the fire department. Six months later licensing came by to check everything for compliance and rejected our doors because they were not wide enough.

We spent another $2000+ to have them (several doors) widened again to the max. Yet people we know with RCFEs in the two counties next to us had doors with widths smaller than our original doors. They never got sited for their doors being too small. I could mention several more things like this that cost us a lot of time and money that other RCFE owners never had to deal with.

Note however, that although one county may require certain things you need to do, another county, or even LPA (Licensed Program Analyst) may not require the same thing. There are only one set of rules and they are not followed evenly, to say the least.

house

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Why do I say this? The list directly above could be a page or two long with restrictions and specifications, inspections, etc. For a small Residential Care Facility for the Elderly you are restricted to a maximum of six people.

This severely limits any potential income. We had a five bedroom house. There was one bedroom for a live-in caretaker, four bedrooms for residents. Each room could have had two beds like most semi-private rooms are, but no, only six are allowed.

Those extra two beds we could not have could have paid for another caretaker and expenses. It could even make the difference between success and just getting by. But it’s not allowed.

 

Many Struggle to make even a Little Profit

The Residential Care Facility for the Elderly requirements you have to follow can eat up a nice portion of your time and reduce your income in many cases. Because of extreme competition in many areas one cannot charge enough to afford to pay help.

Residential Care Facility for the Elderly

Not only that, but in many, dare I say most cases, getting a new client can be very costly. I’ll just mention one facet of this. If you don’t have connections for getting residents you need to use an agency. When we started the fee to get a client was about 50% of the first months rent.

This has gone up to 100% and more in some cases (2015-2016). What if the client leaves within a month, or even two months. What if they pass away shortly after you get them. Remember everyone is old, many sickly, and rarely in good health. Licensing has rules for refunds. Agencies have varying rules to. No matter, it is highly possible the RCFE owner gets the short end of the stick.

Some licensing rules require spending a lot of money to follow. There are so many rules. Can you run your business and make a decent profit or even a profit? Some can. Some cannot. Some people just get disgusted with all the bull crap and just quit. That seems to be happening more and more in 2016. […]

 

rcfe

Two Critical Factors can Make You or Break You

Survival is this business is highly dependent on one having good or excellent connections on getting residents. Two factors are working against you in many cases. Your location and how much you charge residents.

If you have your RCFE in an area where people don’t make much money and the homes are comparatively cheap, then it is more difficult to find or get higher paying residents. Without them you have very little chance of making the business worthwhile.

You may think that RCFEs in more expensive areas have it better. Well that may be. However you’ll most likely find the same or similar situations where there is so much competition you have to lower your prices to even get residents. Ouch, that hurts since profit margins are normally quite low.

Also, I was told by a former RCFE owner who said they were charging $5000 – $6000 per resident in their expensive area. Sometimes more per month. He said they had to close their RCFE because their expenses were generally more than their income from the business. Wow! That was a shocker! I thought we had it bad in our lower income area.

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Continued in RCFE Rant-3

 

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3 Comments

  1. Is it true that if you only have 3 people in your 3 bed room 3 bathroom home and turn it into a RCFE that no license is required????

  2. I just find out this website. Please go to my website at http://www.rcfe40.webs.com to see what happened to me from 2006 to 2011 and now. No one had experienced what I have. CCL DSS falsification of legal documents. DSS chief Fraudulently represent his dept to negotiate with me in a 3 ways conference call with his manager when he actually had already retired on this day and time he set for the conference call (He was Tom Shekta). More and more. I was threatened to be thrown out of San
    Bruno CCl office by Carol Macroft and Susan Roman Clark by building security and high way patrol. LPA Audrey Jeung came to do a narcotic search in my care home without court warrent and in the meeting of Clark. She told me that once we hang our license for business. All resident right were surrounded to CCL. LPA Audrey Jeung practice pharmacy without a pharmacist license in her touching and counter pouring and rebottled all my residents pills and medication in my care home. She practice no infection control and never do any handwashing. Charles Boatman and other dept chief such as Gary Palmer and Mary Jolls had violated State employee economic interest 700 regulation by attending a Lobbiest seminar as speakers and presenters, using their Dept chief title on advertisement to attract business from the attendees. Charles Boatman openly gave CEU to attendees to this lobbiest seminar and he present himself as the speaker and gave CEU that he approved for himself to paid participant and at that time he was not even 3 years to this rcfe dept manager job. He came from child care. What was his qualification to speak to the participant. His right hands approved himself from his left hand. Incompetency of the department. He failed to renewed my administrator license for 2 years when the DSS dept was clearing at fault. He gave me no apology for his mistakes and very costly to my rcfe business. He threw away my 70 approved curriculum that was approved by the analyst Alan Elner and Boatman sent LPA down to gave me a 300000 dollars fine and removed my licenses.7days and 3 days after CCL came and raided my care home but found nothing.On the ALJ court paper CCL and DSS falsified document to say that water temperature was 123F but in fact I never got cited for that in the past. This was the only time I saw on court paper. I found things had been corrected and was cited 2 years ago and had been resolved immediately 2 years ago appeared again on this court paper. In fact, CCL and DSS shameful felt very insecure and they had to lie and lie again for self preservation or act in aggression to make their case sound strong. More and more. LPA never do anything for our residents, they are not here for the residents’ benefit but to crush the owner and make themselves prosper. If what they claim was true a water temp was 123F. They had no investigate any further and left without telling anyone nor to let the owner know what we were cited until surprising found on court paper as add on to make them look good. Gloria Merk, answered my complaint to the senators with her one page written investigation by talking to her staffs in CCL and DSS, the elderly abusers and the perpetrators. She was like all the other chief Jeffrey Hir., Bob Hing, John Wagner, will Lightbourne playing ignored on my complaint. They had presented no evident. More and more on my website http://www.rcfe40.webs.com

    • Sylvia I just read your comment. Wow it looks like CCL did a job on you. I lost my respect for them a few years ago. Actually I never had any respect for them. I see how they lie and cheat plus make up their own rules. That’s one reason for the rant on my website. I think there may be a very small percentage of LPA’s that are ok, but not the others. I have appealed a couple of times when they came to our facility and had to search to find “something wrong”. Once an LPA, a really bad one, came here to inspect us and as he seemed about to leave I believe he got a call from his supervisor. Instead of leaving he stayed another few hours going through our books and searching around for things to write us up for. He found a few minor things he didn’t like and wrote us up for them. I appealed all of them, but unfortunately my appeal never went past his supervisor and of course they denied all my complaints. This happened twice.

      Once I went to a meeting with CCL because my wife was called in and I wanted to know the reason since she had done nothing wrong so I went too. They verbally made her look stupid and like she knew nothing, but in reality she had been in the business about 8 years and never had any serious problems before. I had to get to the heart of the problem and asked them some questions to put them on the spot. From their answers I found out they DO NOT care about the residents, only about themselves. In fact, I was told in no uncertain terms that all they really care about is for RCFEs to follow the rules, their rules which the state is supposed to be following. There is no concern about the residents in the facility. And it appears the county makes up their own rules, so as you can imagine their rules are for their benefit, not for any of the residents. One more thing – there is conflict of interest when they send out an LPA to inspect a facility – and if they find something wrong and fine you it goes back into their system. So they have a big incentive to levy fines since they benefit from the fines. I could say more, but you get the point. My respect for CCL and most of their employees is nil, as well as for the State and their onerous rules that sometimes actually harm the residents of RCFEs if they are strictly followed.
      PS. my site had problems and comments don’t seem to be showing. I have to fix this problem once I determine why plus get rid of a ridiculous amount of spam.

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