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| Woodland Behavioral and Nursing Center, once known as Andover Subacute II, has been in the national spotlight since police found more than a dozen bodies in a temporary morgue there in April 2020.AP |
By Ted Sherman
Woodland Behavioral and Nursing Center, the nursing home in Andover that found itself in the national spotlight after police discovered 17 bodies stored in a temporary morgue after the pandemic struck in April 2020, has finally shut its doors.
Federal funding to the facility was terminated on Monday in the wake of continuing revelations alleging neglectful or abusive care over the past year. And the nursing home in Sussex County that once cared for more than 500 residents, meanwhile, has been empty since Wednesday following a months-long effort to find new places to live for those still there after the state in May moved to revoke Woodland’s license.
Lawyers for Alliance Healthcare Holdings, the operators of Woodland, said they were not authorized to comment and referred questions to the owners, who did not respond.
Alliance is headed by CEO Chaim “Mutty” Scheinbaum of Lakewood and Louis Schwartz — whose father, Joseph Schwartz, was charged in January in a multi-million dollar federal tax fraud scheme in connection with Skyline Healthcare, a failed nationwide home chain that had been based in New Jersey.
The attorney for the owners of the property who lease the nursing home building on Mulford Road in Andover to Alliance — a limited liability company known as BNJD Mulford Property — also said he was not authorized to speak on his client’s behalf regarding what might happen now to the sprawling vacant building.
In court filings, the landlords had fought the state takeover and proposed bringing in an outside management company after they said it became apparent that Alliance “was leading the facility down the wrong path.” They argued that to transfer all patients and close the facility would destroy its value, noting that Woodland was “solely constructed to operate as a nursing home.”
However, advocates such as Laurie Facciarossa Brewer, New Jersey’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman have said the state does not need giant long-term care institutions such as Woodland, which she noted were difficult to staff “and can result in inhumane conditions for the people who live in them.”
State health officials said the department has not received any applications for a license transfer.
The beginning of the end for Woodland came in May, after the New Jersey Department of Health suspended new admissions and then sought to revoke the facility’s license just days after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, said it would terminate all federal funding to the nursing home over its concerns for the safety of residents there.
While the discovery of unclaimed bodies at the nursing home became national news after COVID overwhelmed the facility’s staff and administrators on Easter weekend in 2020, leading to federal fines by CMS of $220,235 for major infection control violations, Woodland came under scathing fire earlier this year for alleged failures in care.
State inspectors in a blistering report found that the staff made no effort to resuscitate a 55-year-old resident found in cardiac arrest and not breathing on New Year’s Day. It also found that one nursing aide reportedly left a resident soiled in feces for ten hours overnight. The resident already had a pressure ulcer, or bedsore, that would have been exacerbated by moisture and susceptible to infection.
The inspectors said there was also no evidence the facility was monitoring for signs and symptoms of COVID-19 for patients under investigation or positive for COVID-19, including those who were later hospitalized or died.
And during one two-week period from late December into January, not a single day went by when there were enough certified nurse aides on duty to care for its residents, regulators found. At times, the nursing home operated with only half the staff required under state mandates.
All the while, Woodland was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, they said.
A Superior Court judge in May took control of the nursing home away from its owners and appointed a receiver to oversee its operations, who launched a fast-paced effort to move the 388 residents who were still there at the end of May, finding them new places to live both within New Jersey and New York before CMS cut off Medicaid and Medicare funding on Monday.
Nancy Kearney, a health department spokeswoman, said the receiver’s responsibility was for the safe and appropriate transfer of all residents.
“Now
that all of the residents have been relocated to new homes, the
department is reviewing next steps, including any remaining tasks of the
receiver,” she said.
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