Connecticut may soon be left with a single nursing home ventilator unit if a Superior Court judge approves a request from the state to close a facility that has been operating under a receiver since 2019.
There are currently 28 residents at Waterbury Gardens, seven of whom are on ventilators, according to local media. There are at least three other residents who are tracheostomy patients. The facility is one of just two in the state that have ventilators, but receiver Katharine Sacks told Judge Claudia Baoi that the facility needs nearly $3 million in improvements and a large-scale mold remediation project. Both complicate sale prospects.
Losing Waterbury Gardens will make things more complicated for residents who need access to specialized long-term care services, LeadingAge Connecticut President Mag Morelli told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News on Friday.
“There is a vital need for more ventilator units in the post-acute setting,” Morelli said. “The lack of available nursing home beds that can provide ventilator care is delaying hospital discharges across the state.”
Sacks said that it costs the state nearly $1 million per month to operate the facility, which has major staffing issues, including “massive numbers of last-minute call-outs and no-shows from clinical employees, a harrowing daily experience requiring urgent last-minute calls to staffing agencies,” per the CT Mirror.
The receiver noted in a July report that beds have been located for the ventilator and tracheostomy residents at the Hospital for Special Care in New Britain and the Gaylord Rehabilitation Center in Wallingford. Some residents who require a ventilator have already moved to the Village Green of Bristol, the state’s other LTC facility with such equipment.
Although the state asked Baio for an expedited bench ruling at the Thursday hearing, she said the issue “was too important” to rush and will review statements from residents before issuing a decision, the CT Mirror reported.
Waterbury Gardens was put into receivership in 2019, after the owners blamed a retroactive change in Medicaid rates for their inability to make payroll. Connecticut’s Department of Social Services, however, said at the time that the facility had voluntarily dropped capacity in its specialized long-term care unit.
SEIU1999NE, the union that represents many Waterbury Gardens employees, filed a motion to keep the facility open, arguing that the closure would be “short-sighted,” per the CT Mirror. The union presented three prospective buyers, but Department of Social Services Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves said after the meetings that “there was no indication a sale could happen,” the paper reported.
