The economy and demographics are killing another South Dakota nursing home, this time in Corsica:
Corsica’s Good Samaritan Society nursing home will be closing.
“In Corsica, we are facing workforce shortages that are expected to intensify in the coming years. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to close Good Samaritan Society,” vice president of operations Katie Davis said in a written statement to KELOLAND News.
According to Davis, the closure is being coordinated with the re-opening of the Good Samaritan facility in Wagner, which is around 30 miles away. The Wagner facility was temporarily closed aftera fire in 2022 that caused smoke and water damage. The facility will reopen in October, according to Good Samaritan Society.
“While closure is always a last resort, despite our best efforts, we cannot continue our mission without a sustainable local workforce,” Davis wrote [Marissa Brunkhorst, “Corsica Good Samaritan Nursing Home to Close,” KELO-TV, 2025.09.18].
Gee, maybe Kristi Noem should’ve spent another million to shoot a workforce recruitment ad showing her dropping Grandma during a bed transfer.
Or maybe Good Sam should divert some of parent org Sanford Health‘s millions of dollars from the sports complex budget to raise wages and attract workforce to Corsica.
Or at the very least, Good Sam/Sanford could step aside and kindly allow someone else to run a nursing home in Corsica, which Good Sam/Sanford, according to Corsica native and now Representative Erik Muckey (D-15/Sioux Falls), is not:
“This is a decision that has interesting context, and potentially anti-competitive actions that are frankly driving this decision to close the facility,” Muckey said “To do this really, from my end, is a slap in the face.”
What Muckey views as anti-competitive action is a non-compete clause for the building once the home closes.
That means any future buyer of the facility can’t reopen as a new care home, making it nearly impossible for Corsica to open another long-term-care facility without an entirely new facility.
“I want to be fair in my assessment that I don’t have every bit of information about what agreements Sanford and Good Sam have placed in the community,” Muckey said. “The information I have available to me tells me that they have placed pretty significant barriers for the facility to be purchased, let alone to staff the facility. I don’t think that’s fair to the community, and frankly I don’t have a lot of patience for any entity to tell a rural community they can or can’t have access to something” [CJ Keene, “Lawmakers See ‘Anti-Competitive’ Elements in Sanford Closure of Corsica Nursing Home,” SDPB, 2025.09.30].
I’ve heard of non-compete clauses for workers, which President Joe Biden worked to ban to promote practical liberty and true capitalism but which ban dictator Trump is now erasing, but this is the first time I’ve read about a non-compete clause for a building. South Dakota limits non-compete agreements to two years but prohibits non-competes of any length for many health care professionals. The 2023 Legislature expanded that ban to several health care jobs but did not include all nursing home staff.
Rep. Muckey plans to seek legislative reforms to address the bind in which Sanford is leaving Corsica. He has support from Corsica’s Representative Marty Overweg (R-21/New Holland), who thinks Sanford is not playing nicely:
Overweg’s said the situation in isn’t a typical rural closure.
“No, no. This is Sanford,” Overweg said. “This is Sanford wanting to play by their own rules.”
The pair say they want to tackle anti-competitive business practices in the industry during the upcoming legislative session.
Both offer one concession – it’s challenging to stay solvent in the long-term care industry in rural settings. However, Overweg said that’s not the whole picture with Sanford.
“(Sanford) wants to be classified as a non-profit, but as soon as they run into where they can’t make a profit – they run and hide,” Overweg said. “Then, when they leave a community like Corsica alone, they’re going to be without a facility, they’ll only sell that building with a non-compete (clause), which I think is totally wrong.”
Overweg said that’s not the rules to the game.
“I think if they want to operate under a nonprofit, there’s some things they’re going to have to abide by,” Overweg said. “They can’t have both rules going their way” [Keene, 2025.09.30].
Maybe Muckey and Overweg can address Corsica’s conundrum from a property rights angle that motivates many of the new members of Overweg’s caucus: if a local entity acquires the nursing home that Good Sam/Sanford is abandoning, that new owner should be able to what it wants with its new property, including set up an enterprise that is vital to the health and economic well-being of the community, regardless of the budget-boosting wishes of the previous owner.