The largest nursing home in St. Louis closed abruptly, leaving about 100 workers without their last paycheck and moving 170 residents without notifying their families, The New York Times reported Dec. 19.
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services told Becker's they were notified of the staffing situation Dec. 15 at approximately 4:15 p.m. "The facility operators were working to implement their emergency evacuation plan, and local EMS assisted with the relocation of approximately 170 residents," Lisa Cox, a department spokesperson, said. "Our team remained on site monitoring the evacuation. The final resident left the facility before 6 a.m. Saturday. Our team continued working through the weekend following up with the receiving facilities to check in on the residents who had been transferred. We cannot comment on the ongoing investigation."
More than 170 residents were shuttled overnight to their new homes, many leaving belongings behind, and their relatives not informed where they were taken, Marjorie Moore, executive director for VOYCE, a group in St. Louis that advocates for long-term care residents and their relatives, told the Times.
The roughly 100 workers told the Times they became aware of an issue at the nursing home only when their paychecks did not come through Friday afternoon.
It is unclear why the nursing home shut down so swiftly. Typically, nursing homes must notify Medicaid of a shutdown and give the state time to transfer residents, but a union representative told the newspaper that did not happen.
Healthcare Accounting Services, the company that owns the nursing home, was unreachable by phone, the Times reported.
The facility has received more than 20 citations in the past three years, including $140,000 in fines in March 2021 for not meeting federal standards.