If you have stayed with us through the past six installments of the My Home digital newsletters’ lengthy explorations of the “Baptist Homes Benevolence History – A Complicated Story”, congratulations, you deserve some kind of reward! In this, our final installment, we will explore a hopeful path forward for Baptist Homes & Healthcare Ministries.
Using Medicare and Medicaid funding to cover the vast majority of the cost of care for our residents has moved Baptist Homes from the precipice of irrelevance to the pathway of greater ministry opportunities.
With over 84% of seniors funding the cost of their care through the tax payor funded programs of Medicare and Medicaid, is there any further role for the individuals, churches and denomination who have supported Baptist Homes for over a century? The unequivocal answer is a resounding yes! In fact, we now have the opportunity to be hyper-focused on how your support can bless this ministry, and we have a new funding initiative to meet those future needs.
There are three major areas of financial need for the Baptist Homes that are unique to our ministry as we seek to be a ministry which sets the standard for Christlike care for the aging. Those areas are: meeting the spiritual needs of all of our residents, financially assisting those pastors who lack resources, and providing assistance for those who lack enough funds for assisted living.
Yes, it is difficult to ask for your support to minister to the spiritual needs of our residents in a climate in which we have had to temporarily release our campus pastors. However, through a renewed effort to involve local churches as leaders in the “Soul Care” on our campuses, we are seeing a greater involvement and interest in those worship, Bible study, and prayer opportunities on our campuses. So, we ask for your continued support, both financially and through your direct involvement on our campuses, leading in the various spiritual initiatives to evangelize and disciple our residents.
The second area where we need your financial assistance is supporting pastors around our state who opted out of Social Security at some point in their ministry. What many of them did not realize was this process eliminated access to Medicare insurance as well as Social Security income. Today, they are living on very limited resources. We are addressing this need at our Arcadia Valley campus through the ongoing remodeling of a portion of the Riggs Scott building to provide studio apartment living at a very modest cost. Even with this modest cost, there are pastors who will need our assistance.
A final area of needed support is covering the financial gap for assisted living residents. Until recently, there was no payment source from tax payor funded resources for assisted living. This meant that a significant portion of our potential residents did not have enough income to cover the cost of assisted living. Recently, we have begun participating in the Medicaid-funded Home & Community Based Services, which provides a significant portion of the assisted living costs. However, there is still a shortfall in that coverage that needs to be fulfilled.
Also recently, our board approved a recommendation from our Benevolent Task Force to create the John Burney Assistance Grant. Named for the longest-tenured leader of The Baptist Home, this grant process will provide up to $500 per month to cover the shortfall in the cost of care for pastors who choose to live at our Shepherd’s Home location at our Arcadia Valley campus, and to supplement the cost of assisted living residents on all of our campuses.
Moving from a strictly private pay model which focused on ministry to those who could not afford the total cost of their care to the tax payor funded processes of Medicare and Medicaid has been a journey that has taken the combined efforts of executive staff, campus leaders, and trustees. We believe that the combined utilization of tax payor funded mechanisms and the John Burney Assistance Grant will help stabilize the financial future of Baptist Homes & Healthcare Ministries and open the door to great opportunities of ministry.
