The abrupt shutdown of Northview Village Nursing Home on Friday came after workers learned they might not be paid and walked out, confusing residents and their relatives. Many family members gathered through the day Saturday outside the facility on the city’s north side. Some didn’t immediately know where their loved ones were taken.
Alvin Cooper of East St. Louis, Illinois, was preparing Monday to fill out a missing person’s report on his 35-year-old son. Alvin Cooper Jr. has lived at Northview Village for several months while recovering from a gunshot wound to the head and a drug addiction.
“They don’t know where he is,” Alvin Cooper said. “I’ve burnt two tanks of gas going back and forth to that nursing home trying to find out what’s going on. I don’t know if he’s somewhere safe or what’s going to happen to him.”
The difficulties started Friday when, according to the union representing workers, more than 130 people went unpaid, and it became unclear if their checks would be forthcoming.
Northview Village has been fined 12 times for federal violations since March 2021, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Fines totaled over $140,000 and ranged from $2,200 to more than $45,000. The federal agency gives Northview a one-star rating out of a possible five, but doesn’t spell out reasons for the fines.
In addition, the state health department website lists nearly two dozen Northview investigations since 2016. The most recent complaint, from February, said a resident was able to get out of the building through an unsecured door. A 2021 complaint alleged the facility failed to investigate allegations that residents left the nursing home and brought drugs into it.
My lovely wife works in the kitchen of a retirement home. She has watched things go down in the elderly care industry for several years now.
And you’re not wrong, although I think your estimate of 10 years is too generous. Elderly people who don’t have any assets like a home will naturally assume they can just stay with their kids. Except both of their adult children probably need to work. They don’t have time or money to take care of Mom or Dad. They can’t take them to appointments. They can’t help with medication. They may not even have a space for them at home. And they certainly do not have $3,000 a month so they can put mom or dad in a nursing home.
I imagine there are many who would do their best. But then there ard those like my wife’s parents, who were and still are abusive, terrible people who have burned every bridge they could, and are now having to cope with the idea that none of the family they gaslit for decades wants to help.