You’re just hoping the next place isn’t going to close too,” said a New Jersey woman whose brother will be forced to move from The Villa, where he has lived for a year-and-a-half.
The Armenian home and The Villa, both nonprofits, have received high marks for quality care over the years and together cared for dozens of COVID-19-positive residents who survived, and others who did not.
Representatives for the two facilities did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but New Jersey nursing home leaders, elder advocates and family members shared similar concerns about the enormous impact of COVID-19 on an already unstable industry.
More than half the state’s COVID-19 fatalities involved deaths in nursing homes last spring, prompting the state to hire a consultant whose report identified multiple weaknesses within industry operations and state oversight.
Now, as the pandemic is receding, some experts warn that these closures are not isolated incidents, but indications that a long-standing trend is on the upswing.
Brewer’s office must be notified of these closures, and she said it has also recorded shutdowns this year in several assisted living facilities — where residents live more independently in their own apartment-style unit — and is now reviewing the closure plans for another nursing home, in which individuals live one or more in a room and depend on nurses to provide medical treatments or significant daily assistance.
Jim McCracken, president and CEO of LeadingAge of New Jersey and Delaware, which represents nonprofit long-term care operators, said the pandemic exacerbated the industry’s existing problems and highlighted the need to address historic concerns, like the lack of frontline staff.
Medicaid, which pays for at least seven out of 10 nursing home residents in New Jersey, was already shifting to fund more home- and community-based services, she explained, and families may favor that model more in the future, given the impact COVID-19 had on nursing home residents.
New Jersey now has about 370 nursing homes, three-quarters of which are for-profit operations.
Whether the closures are part of a move toward “rightsizing” the industry or not, the actions are hard for residents, family members and staff, experts agree.
8, operators at the 86-bed Armenian home provided residents’ families with a list of seven other facilities in the region, five with spots open for Medicaid members.
The woman whose brother lives at The Villa said she was informed by staff about the closure in late April and told she had 60 days to find him a new home.
She said she is now working through a list of other potential options, balancing financial considerations, her brother’s need for services, location, transportation requirements and other factors to decide what makes sense.
According to data compiled by LeadingAge’s national office, some 550 nursing homes closed nationwide between 2015 and 2019, with nearly 200 in the last year alone.
Despite this capacity drop, the occupancy rate at nursing homes also has declined nationwide, the LeadingAge study showed.
While state officials declined to provide specifics, the census at New Jersey nursing homes has since plummeted further, a result of COVID-19’s high death toll among their elderly, vulnerable population and declining admissions of new rehab patients and aging community members, experts note.
The skilled nursing facility at Seashore Gardens Living Center, a 102-year-old nonprofit home for Jewish elders in Galloway Township, now has just over half its 140 beds filled, according to CEO Martin Klein, who has run the facility for decades.
“Anyone in their right mind, who knows profit and loss, why would you be in this business?” Klein asked.
The sprawling Ewing complex provides memory care, assisted living and other services, including skilled nursing, which Goldstein said operated at about a $1 million annual deficit before the pandemic.
Greenwood House, like many nursing homes, benefited from some federal emergency aid under the pandemic, including federal grants and further state funding to help pay for additional gowns, masks and other personal protective equipment, or PPE, for staff, Goldstein said.
But Klein and Goldstein are also frustrated with other government actions taken during the pandemic that they said only complicated their work and increased the cost of business.
Lilo has covered New Jersey for two decades, much of it with Gannett newspapers, reporting on public policy, national political conventions and the 9/11 attack on lower Manhattan.
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