Nursing home in St. Louis is suddenly closed, forcing more than 170 residents from their homes

The largest nursing home in St. Louis closed so abruptly last week, according to the union that represents workers there, that 170 people living there were moved to new homes without notifying family members and that staff did not receive their final paychecks .

The Missouri Health and Senior Services Department said in a statement to The Associated Press that it was notified of the closure of Northview Village on Friday afternoon. Lenny Jones, the state director of a union representing the factory’s employees confirmed the closure.

More than 170 residents, who were transported to their new homes overnight, left their belongings behind and their family members were not notified of the move, said Marjorie Moore, executive director of VOYCE, a St. Louis advocacy group for long-term cooperation. long-term care residents and their family members. Mr Jones also confirmed the movement of the 170 people.

Northview Village’s phone number appeared to be in service late Monday evening. And a message could not be left for Healthcare Accounting Services, the company that owns the nursing home, at the number listed.

“It really is like a family torn apart,” Ms. Moore said, adding that they helped relatives find residents, some of whom were transferred to at least 14 other facilities in the region. Many of the residents relied on Medicaid, she said in a telephone interview, making it even more difficult to find new homes for them.

“These people were certainly not in good health and needed a lot of care,” she said. “It’s almost like their whole world has been ripped away from them.”

Over the past three years, the facility has received more than 20 citations after inspectors investigated complaints. As of March 2021, it had received more than $140,000 in fines for failing to meet federal standards.

An employee who visited the facility on Saturday described the scene as “apocalyptic”, Ms Moore added. “It looked like the building had been looted. There were papers everywhere. There were just carts being looted,” Ms. Moore said of the employee’s account. There were several televisions still on and baseball cards on one bed. “It was like everyone had to go all at once.”

On Monday, family members were still desperately trying to find their loved ones in their new care facilities. Alvin Cooper told The AP he was trying to find his son, Alvin Cooper Jr., who had been living at Northview Village for several months while recovering from a gunshot wound to the head.

“They don’t know where he is,” Mr. Cooper told the AP. He was preparing to file a missing persons report. “I don’t know if he is safe anywhere and what will happen to him.”

It was unclear Monday evening why Northview Village had closed so quickly. According to the union representing about 100 workers at the nursing home, workers first realized something was wrong when they didn’t receive their biweekly paychecks Friday afternoon.

“They were told there was no money coming,” said Mr. Jones, the Missouri state director local of the Service Employees International Union. “There are employees who have lost their jobs and have been working there for 37 years.”

“They didn’t prepare us,” Carolyn Hawthorn, a registered nurse, told reporters outside the facility on Friday. “Many employees here work hard. They need this money to feed their children,” she said, adding: “It is ten days before Christmas.”

Mr Jones said he had never heard of such an abrupt closure. Normally, he said, a nursing home must notify the federal Medicaid program and give the state time to transfer residents to other families and contact their relatives.

“This nursing home clearly did not do that,” he said. Employees have since been told they would receive their salaries soon, but were not told about other benefits such as accrued vacation time and severance pay.

He added that the union had been receiving complaints from employees about Northview Village for years, including bed bugs, sewage problems and staff shortages. He said the problem of nursing home owners putting profit over care is endemic.

Northview Village had received a rating of one out of five stars under a federal rating system, numbers that could be inflated, a Times investigation found this year. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, the nursing staff at Northview Village was spent almost two hours with each resident per day, about half the national average.