Hundreds of elderly residents and people with disabilities from four nursing homes in western Massachusetts are quickly being displaced as the company that owns them appears to be accelerating the pace in which such centers stand to close down.
Sarah Vilanova, who is blind and is missing a leg, had been living in the Willimansett Center East nursing home in Chicopee for about a year and a half when staffers told her in February that she would be transferred the next day to another nursing home 45 minutes away.
Vilanova, a 48-year-old woman who is Puerto Rican, stood to be transferred to the same nursing home where she recalled having had “a bad experience,” making the news even more distressing.
“I started panicking and screaming,” Vilanova told NBC News. “I had a panic attack, totally blind, I was bumping into everything with the wheelchair.”
Willimansett Center East was the first of the four homes to shut down on March 17, even though the plan approved by the state’s public health department called “for closure of the Facility on or about June 6.”
The other three homes still in the process of closing down are Chapin Center, in Springfield; Governor’s Center, in Westfield; and Willimansett Center West, in Chicopee.
All four homes are owned by Northeast Health Group, a Florida-based company.
Vilanova got the news that she would be displaced shortly after Northeast Health Group informed state public health officials on Feb. 6 of their intent to close down the facilities.
The company blamed the closures on post-Covid state regulations approved on April 2021 requiring long-term care homes to not have more than two beds in each room starting May 2022.
The regulations were the result of public outcry over a Covid outbreak that killed 84 people at Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, a state-run facility for veterans. The outbreak resulted in criminal charges, which were later dismissed, and a $56 million settlement with the state, Reuters reported.
Massachusetts’ Department of…
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