Hudson Valley's largest nursing home closed one quarter of its beds due to short staffing
GOSHEN - Hiring enough nurses and aides to fully staff the Valley View Center for Nursing Care and Rehabilitation has proved so difficult that the home has now closed 90 of its 360 beds, stoking a backlog of families seeking a room for a loved one.
The county-owned home is the largest in the Mid Hudson Valley's seven counties and is struggling with a nationwide problem: a health care staffing shortage that predated the COVID-19 pandemic but worsened as a result of it, as workers retired or left for other occupations after the prolonged strain of working on the front lines.
Valley View already had taken 75 beds out of service by April but has since gone even further, shuttering three entire units. Around 50 people are now waiting for long-term care beds there. Asked if the downsizing may be permanent, Valley View Administrator Laurence LaDue said he wants to hire more workers and reopen beds but sees little immediate prospect of that.
"To be honest, I don't see that in the near future," LaDue said.
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Among those waiting for an opening at Valley View are Ellen and Mike Korsower, whose 45-year-old daughter, Zoe Dolce, is recuperating at Northern Manor Geriatric Center in Nanuet after suffering a debilitating stroke last year. Northern Manor is 45 minutes from their Sugar Loaf home and was the closest place with an available bed after she had made enough progress to be moved from a New Jersey hospital in January.
Dolce remains mostly paralyzed on her right side, has trouble speaking and eats through a feeding tube. The Korsowers, who travel to see their daughter in Rockland County twice a week, have been working with a hired care manager to try to move her to a facility closer to home, both for better care and more frequent visits. So far no beds have been free.
"She really would benefit by seeing her family and friends more often," Ellen Korsower said.
Also holding out for an opening at Valley View is Gary Bennett, whose 81-year-old wife, Jeanette, has been at Montefiore Nyack Hospital since May, awaiting transfer to a nursing home. The hospital has recommended facilities in New Jersey and Connecticut, and others as far away as Saratoga and Rochester, but Bennett wants his wife to live closer to their Westtown home, preferably at Valley View. She, too, is on the waiting list.
"It's a crying shame," Bennett said. "She's been down there 40-something days now."
The total numbers of residents and workers at New York nursing homes have risen since January, showing both that some facilities do have available beds and that staffing has partially rebounded from its pandemic lows. As of the end of June, the state's 606 nursing homes had nearly 95,000 residents and more than 77,000 employees, according to state Department of Health counts. That included 87 Hudson Valley homes with more than 11,000 residents and 9,200 workers.
But LaDue points out that nursing home occupancy statewide remains below its pre-pandemic median of 95%, hovering at about 90% with 17,125 unoccupied beds today. Valley View is far short of the median with 68% of its beds filled.
The recent employee growth coincided with the state imposition of minimum staffing levels at nursing homes, under a law that took effect on March 31 and forced some facilities to expand their workforces. LaDue speculated that part of the overall rise in worker numbers is attributable to hiring at for-profit homes, which he said make up about two-thirds of all homes in New York and had bigger staffing deficits to fill than nonprofit facilities and government-owned homes like Valley View.
Valley View has been trying to lure new workers with sign-on bonuses ranging from $1,500 for certified nursing assistants to $3,500 for registered nurses. Salaries for new hires start at $20.50 an hour for nursing assistants and $28.33 for licensed practical nurses, with higher amounts for shifts with nighttime hours.
The county-owned home in neighboring Sullivan County also is offering bonuses to attract new workers and has temporarily closed beds due to short staffing. The Care Center at Sunset Lake closed a 32-bed unit, 22% of the 144-bed facility.
Valley View would need to hire 17 to 19 employees for each of the three units it closed in order to reopen them, or up to 57 total workers overall. But one limiting factor is the amount of faculty and classroom space to train them at local colleges, LaDue said. SUNY Orange, for instance, can take no more than 40 students per year in its registered nursing program, he said.
LaDue also faulted the state for taking punitive steps - fining facilities for mandating overtime, for example - rather than offering more incentives for new employees or welcoming workers from other states through reciprocal licenses. The state included $3,000 retention bonuses for current health care workers in this year's budget but hasn't made regulations yet to begin paying them, LaDue said.
He said Valley View - which used to have 520 beds and was downsized to 360 in 2009 - closed three units mostly because it couldn't safely care for the residents who would be housed there. The home is bound by the state's new staffing mandate, but LaDue said that factor was secondary to Valley View meeting its own standard for responsible care.
New York's nursing home operators and their trade groups are fighting the minimum staffing requirement and other new mandates in court.
LeadingAge New York, an organization representing the state's nonprofit and government-owned nursing homes, sued the state on their behalf in May to challenge the new minimum-staffing mandate. The case, now pending in state Supreme Court in Albany, argued that a uniform standard disregards variations among homes and the types of services residents need, and would force the homes to hire 12,000 more workers at a cost of $1.8 billion a year.
The operators of around 240 for-profit homes have another pending lawsuit against New York to void a law that aimed to boost staffing by requiring nursing homes to spend at least 70% of their income on resident care and limiting their owners' profits to 5%. That case was brought in federal court in Albany in December.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@th-record.com.
This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Orange County nursing home closes 90 of 360 beds due to low staffing
