Wednesday, August 1, 2012 11:13 PM EDT
WETHERSFIELD ? A 210-bed nursing home now sits vacant on Jordan Lane after its final resident was discharged last week and it closed its doors.
Healthbridge Management, the New Jersey-based elder care company that operates Wethersfield Health Care Center and nine other nursing homes in the state, cited financial problems as its reason for closing the home.
According to Healthbridge officials, the building needed extensive renovation.
Since March, the company laid off more than 170 workers at the center, including nurses, dietary aides, housekeeping staff and others. Simultaneously, patients were slowly transferred out by family members who were informed of the likely closure last year, before the company received permission.
The state first denied the application over the winter because they did not send the appropriate materials legitimizing their financial losses. Healthbridge called the information ?confidential?? before finally releasing a statement in May revealing it incurred over $15 million in debt from operations at the Wethersfield center since 2003, when it acquired the facility.
The order issued by DSS back in June noted that 800 of the nearly 9,000 nursing home beds within 15 miles of Wethersfield were vacant. Patients either moved back in with their families or were relocated to these other facilities.
A certified nursing assistant there for the last 32 years, Pauline Dunchie-Legg was heartbroken to leave her patients when she was laid off at the end of June.
?I love that place, I wish it didn?t close,? she said Wednesday during a lunch break from her other job at a nursing home in East Hartford, where five of the WHCC?s residents happened to be sent.?
?I miss the residents the most, but they transferred five here and there are three in my unit,? explained Dunchie-Legg, who has worked the two jobs since she came to the United States in 1995 and is therefore struggling financially.
?It?s very hard for me right now. They didn?t give us any severance packages ... it really dismantled all the family spirit we had there; everyone went their separate ways, some are still trying to find jobs.?
Healthbridge has been in the spotlight for a more controversial issue over the last six months - its contract negotiations with the New England Healthcare Employees Union, District 1199.
Erica Schmitt can be reached at (860) 225-4601, ext. 210, or eschmitt@newbritainherald.com.
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Source: http://www.bristolpress.com/articles/2012/08/02/news/doc5019ef309d75a090484167.txt
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