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Posted 05.19.08
Crestwood Part 1: Whippany nursing home to seniors: Move out Daily Record -- March 2007

By Vidya Padmanabhan

Originally published in the Daily Record, March 19, 2007

HANOVER TWP. -- Seniors at the Crestwood nursing home in Whippany were given notice last Friday that they had to find somewhere else to live, as the institution gets ready for long-term renovations that could start as early as a month from now.

Crestwood, a relatively small facility with 75 beds, has been serving the area since 1956. "It's really lovely," said Collette Davis, whose 92-year-old father, Theodore Davis, lives at Crestwood. "It's small and quaint."

Davis came home late last Friday to find a message on her machine at around 7 p.m., informing her that Crestwood was closing for renovations and that she should call the facility's social worker.

"I can't believe how they can expect me to find another place in just a month," Davis said. "I just can't believe that this can be allowed."

The renovation plans were drawn up after the recent purchase of Crestwood by Care One, a company that operates 25 assisted living facilities in New Jersey. The company plans to shut down Crestwood for work that will result in an expanded facility that will accommodate more residents, said Care One's vice president of operations, Tim Hodges. Plans are still fluid but involve extensive interior and exterior renovations that are expected to last around 18 months, starting in the next 30 to 60 days, he said.

The exact number of residents at the facility was "proprietary information," Hodges said. A longtime Crestwood volunteer, Rose DeCaro, estimated the number at around 40.

Care One has had a team of 15 employees at Crestwood since Friday, offering assistance to residents and their families on health care, social services, and coordination of discharge, if the family chooses to avail of the service, Hodges said.

"They don't really care where my father goes," Davis said.

The Lake Hopatcong resident would like to see her father, a longtime East Hanover resident, stay in an area familiar to him and convenient for her. Relatives were given two weeks in which to come up with a list of nursing homes where they would like to see their loved ones placed, Davis said. She picked facilities in Succasunna, Parsippany, Morris Township and Dover. However, all the facilities she had chosen were full, and her father has been put on waiting lists.

"I'm livid," she said. "I feel for the people who work there, too. You can see the pain in their eyes."

Care One is offering placement assistance to Crestwood employees, Hodges said. They are being advised of openings at other Care One facilities and elsewhere, he said.

Rose DeCaro, 88, a Crestwood volunteer, was at the facility last Friday when the news came. "Someone made an announcement," she said. "I had just run bingo on the microphone, so I asked them to use the microphone. (The residents) can't hear very well."

DeCaro has deep ties with Crestwood. She has worked there for 33 years -- 17 years as an employee, and as a volunteer since, running anagrams and bingo sessions on Tuesdays and Fridays. She has been named Volunteer of the Year several times. "I cried all the way home," she said of last Friday. "I'm very upset about it. I love them so much."

"It's such short notice," she said. "They should have been given more notice."

The law requires a minimum of 30 days' notice to close down an elder care facility, said Vincent Macri, an Elder Law attorney who has several clients at Crestwood and is working to place them elsewhere. Care One's move is perfectly legal, but it is unusual, he said, since nursing homes in the area are doing well and rarely close down.

It would be difficult to place the seniors in new facilities because many of them had spent their savings on their previous nursing homes before they went on Medicaid, he said. "If they had $50 - 60,000 to spend, it would be okay, but they don't. A new nursing home is going to have to take them as Medicaid patients from day one," he said.

He has not seen much success this week trying to place his clients, he said. They remain on waiting lists at several places.

Care One is shutting down Crestwood for the safety and well-being of residents, Hodges said. "We clarified at three family group meetings that placement timing would solely be based on the appropriateness of placement and finding an environment that is suitable," he said. "Thirty days would likely be the date that we will close, but we have stressed and underscored the fact that the timeline would be flexible."

"That's news to me," said Davis. A Crestwood social worker has been calling the nursing homes on Davis' list every day to check for openings, she said, but told her on Wednesday that if an opening did not come up by the time Crestwood was ready to close, her father would be placed temporarily in a Care One facility.

The solution offered did not appeal to her, Davis said. "It seems like Elder Care people have no rights," she said. "This may be legal, but it's not moral."