Sam Magness is a 9th grader from East Palestine. Just two years ago, Sam was a straight-A, 7th grader when she suffered five cardiac arrests at her softball game.

After months in a coma, Sam is now non-verbal, no longer ambulatory and relies on at-home nursing care.

“We’re suffering this devastation, total change of life, collapsing of our family, not knowing what to do, being horrified and having to take care of Sam as well,” said Summer Magness, Sam’s mother.

Summer and her husband, Justin, work full time and also have another daughter named Olivia. Ohio Medicaid provides 112 hours of coverage per week to the family but staffing agencies throughout Ohio are rarely able to fill these hours due to a shortage of caregivers.

“We’ve gone through 16 nurses from the time I started through today,” said Bobi Jo Piper, Sam’s nurse with Maxim Healthcare. “Nurses find better paying jobs. Some don’t have staffing 16 hours out of the day, like they’re supposed to have, because we can’t pay our nurses what they deserve to be paid.”

“The reimbursement rate for these services to allow people to receive healthcare services in their home are less than they were in 1998,” said Joe Russell, Executive Director, Ohio Council for Home Care & Hospice to 21 News.

Russell said reimbursement rates for services in states like Pennsylvania and West Virginia are much higher, which could give Ohio patients no choice but to go to a facility for care that is substantially more expensive.

“By simply making some small investments through the Ohio Medicaid Program, agencies are going to be able to invest in their workforce and are going to be able to expand the number of people available,” Russell said. “At the end of the day, they’re going to give a lot of children a better quality of life.”

“I’m not a nurse, I’m a mother,” Magness said. “Without nursing, we wouldn’t have made it this far. When we don’t have it filled, I can tell you that we are the most exhausted family possible. Because it’s 24/7.”

Russell also told 21 News Medicare pays their employees three times more for similar services and if Ohio Medicaid reimbursement rates don’t improve soon, it’s likely at-home care could completely collapse with time.