Vincent S. Hambright, the Brius executive in charge of the company’s Humboldt nursing homes, is eager to “assist” those who may be concerned about the closure of Eureka, Pacific, and Seaview rehabilitation and wellness centers. He invites you to give him a call at: (888) 299-2251.
So call Vincent and let him know exactly what you think of Brius’ plan to shutter these nursing homes and to displace hundreds of frail elders to places as far away as Oregon.
California State Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) is convinced that Brius’ recently amended closure plans (September 13), which still call for the elimination of 258 nursing home beds in Humboldt County, is “dangerous” and will place “the most medically fragile at risk.”
McGuire sent a letter to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) on September 19 after reading Brius’ revised closure plan. The letter expresses his concern over Brius’ failure to address the “serious health and safety concerns related to relocation of [Humboldt] residents living in the facilities.”
According to the Senator’s letter, Brius, which owns all 5 nursing homes in Humboldt, plans to stop accepting residents into their nursing homes this Saturday, September 24. The company’s plan is “simply not acceptable,” writes McGuire, adding that this “irresponsible” timeline would create a “crisis” for hospitals in Humboldt and throughout the region looking to discharge their patients to local nursing homes.
Brius’ proposed elimination of nearly 60 percent of Humboldt’s available nursing home beds is “unprecedented in California,” writes McGuire. Senator McGuire urges CDPH to reject the company’s amended closure plan and consider all other reasonable alternatives, including receivership, that will ensure residents’ health and safety remains the “top priority” once and for all.
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Last Thursday, the North Coast Journal reported on the fierce opposition to Brius’ effort to close three nursing homes in Humboldt County – Eureka, Pacific, and Seaview rehabilitation and wellness centers – and transfer approximately 200 frail, elderly and disabled residents to nursing homes hundreds of miles from their families.
On September 8, nursing home residents at Eureka Rehabilitation and Wellness Center and their family members attended a meeting at the nursing home where Brius executive Vincent Hambright explained the company’s decision to close the facilities and relocate dozens of seniors to other nursing homes several counties away. According to the Journal, Catherine Pugel, whose mother and father share a room at the home, “quivered with anger” as Hambright spoke about lost profits. “My mom has Alzheimer’s, she’s in the final stages,” said Pugel. “Will a transfer kill her? Will such a transfer be traumatic? These are the things we are now looking at.” Pugel says that her parents, who have been married for 52 years, could be forced to live apart as a result of the company’s plans to shutter the facilities.
And it’s not just residents and their loved ones that are upset and frustrated. California State Sen. Mike McGuire told the newspaper: “To be honest, we are tired of the excuses. Rockport [a Brius subsidiary] needs to stand up and do their damned job.”
“We met with them today for the first time,” said McGuire. “I have never seen a situation like this, in all of my time, handled so poorly. I have never seen a corporation lie like this one has.”
During the meeting, one family member “confronted [Hambright], saying that staff taking care of her parents had personally said they were overworked, understaffed, tired.”
Here’s what happened next, according to the article:
“We are not understaffed,” Hambright insisted at the meeting.
“‘Excuse me, you are,’ said a large, mustachioed man, who received an alarmed call from his mother-in-law in the middle of the night the week prior. He said he and his wife had to personally come down to the facility and change her soiled diapers because there was only one person on staff for the entire wing. ‘You are understaffed. You need to do something about this. And I want you to know – I don’t go away.’”
Other residents chimed in with similar stories, including a nursing home resident whose toes had been amputated and who said his bandages hadn’t been changed in two days due to a lack of a wound care nurse.
On August 24, Brius submitted proposed plans to close three nursing homes in Humboldt County with officials at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). The controversial plan, which would close 3 of the county’s 5 nursing homes, dropping the number of available nursing home beds from 449 to 258, is being covered by several media outlets.
On September 8, CDPH rejected Brius’ initial set of plans in part because of it failed to give a clear outline as to how the company would limit the trauma effected nursing home residents would have to endure as a result of the homes shutting down. On September 13, Brius resubmitted amended closure plans to CDPH, which has ten days from that date to review the new proposal. CDPH could rule on the matter by this Friday. Click on the reports below and follow this developing story.
Eureka Times Standard:
North Coast Journal:
Lost Coast Outpost:
On September 13, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) sent a letter to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), expressing concerns over Brius’ initial plans to close three nursing homes in Humboldt County and calling into question the company’s claims of lost profits and its use of temporary nursing personnel. You can find the letter here.
While Brius has stated in the press that it has lost $5 million over the last 18 months, the company’s own self-reported financial information tells a different story. According to California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, since 2011, when Brius took over of these nursing homes, to 2015, the most recent year for which such information is available, the company tallied more than $5.46 million in profits from the operation of these homes. In fact, in this same time period, the three nursing homes that are being planned for closure – Eureka, Pacific, and Seaview rehabilitation and wellness centers – have shown a total profit of $1.65 million (see the chart below).
NUHW’s letter asks CDPH to remove Brius as the operator of the nursing homes and place the facilities into receivership until a suitable operator (or operators) can be brought in to run them on a day-to-day basis. NUHW’s actions join a growing network of concerned individuals and groups that include legislators, state agencies, and elder advocates.
| 2011* | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | Total | |
| Eureka Rehab. | $148,208 | $795,910 | -$81,696 | -$228,105 | -$1,576,688 | -$942,371 |
| Pacific Rehab. | $113,464 | $407,168 | $66,212 | $595,689 | $1,963 | $1,184,496 |
| Seaview Rehab. | -$353,073 | $577,166 | $532,675 | $849,149 | -$193,983 | $1,411,934 |
| Granada Rehab. | $579,506 | $792,218 | $722,901 | $684,807 | $141,971 | $2,921,403 |
| Fortuna Rehab. | $288,548 | $268,367 | -$79,744 | $270,002 | $145,205 | $892,378 |
| Total | $776,653 | $2,840,829 | $1,160,348 | $2,171,542 | -$1,481,352 | $5,467,840 |
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On September 8, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) denied Brius’ initial proposed plan to close three of its five nursing homes in Humboldt County – Eureka, Pacific, and Seaview rehabilitation and wellness centers. However, the CDPH did leave the door open for a closure if Brius submitted new amended plans that addressed the agency’s issues of how and where it would transfer the nursing home’s effected residents.
This, in fact, is exactly what has happened. Brius, which seems bent on closing these nursing homes, resubmitted new proposed closure plans to the CDPH on September 13th. The clock is now ticking as the state has 10 days to reject or accept the new set of plans.
See the CDPH’s rejection letter of Brius’ initial closure plan, and Brius’ recently amended plan below.
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On September 6, Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) sent a letter to the California Department of Public Health voicing his deep concern over the dangers of Brius’ plan to close three nursing homes in Humboldt County – Eureka, Pacific, and Seaview Rehabilitation and Wellness Centers.
In his letter to the state agency, Senator McGuire writes “I have reviewed the plans and I am deeply concerned that [Brius and Rockport] provide no timelines, no detail on the discharge process and no detail on the determination of relocating patients based on distance to family, prior transfer history or mitigation to ‘transfer trauma’ associated with the relocation of elderly and infirm.”
The Senator’s letter goes on to dismiss Rockport’s claim that they are not able to turn a profit at the three nursing homes, citing a decision by Partnership Healthplan of California – the organization responsible for administering Medi-Cal benefits in 14 Northern California counties including Humboldt – to provide Rockport with $931,370 in retroactive payments and a commitment not to implement reductions in Medi-Cal reimbursement rates.
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On October 22, 2015, the FBI raided and seized documents at Alta Vista Healthcare and Wellness Center in Riverside. The FBI won’t comment on the ongoing investigation, but the incident is the latest in a series of serious actions at Brius facilities. See the Riverside Press Enterprise story here and the Sacramento Bee story here.
In August 2015, the California Attorney General charged the former director of nursing at Brius’ Mesa Verde Post Acute Care Center in Costa Mesa on counts of inflicting injury on an elder and failing to report elder abuse.
Also in August, the Attorney General’s office filed involuntary manslaughter charges against Verdugo Valley Skilled Nursing and Wellness Centre in Montrose, Calif., as well as felony charges of dependent-adult abuse against the nursing home’s director of nursing and a supervising nurse. These charges were in connection with the death of a burn victim who was allegedly neglected while a resident at the nursing home.
On September 1, 2016, State and Humboldt County officials with the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program submitted a joint letter to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) requesting that the CDPH deny Brius’ petition to close three of its five nursing homes in Humboldt County — Eureka, Pacific, and Seaview Rehabilitation and Wellness Centers.
Brius, which holds a near monopoly on Humboldt County’s nursing home industry, submitted a formal request to the CDPH on August 24 to shut down the three nursing homes, according to the complaint. The closures would eliminate 258 of the county’s 446 nursing home beds and force nearly as many residents to relocate, according to the formal complaint letter.
“This is a highly unusual situation and one that could have traumatic consequences for hundreds of Eureka area nursing home residents,” write the ombudsmen.
“If authorized by CDPH, the planned closing of the three nursing homes all at the same time would create a terrible crisis by reducing bed capacity by nearly 60% in a community that is already underserved due to an aging population and insufficient alternatives,” the letter continues. “We are deeply concerned about the probability of transfer trauma that would hurt or kill residents.”
Many of the residents who would be forced out of the three Humboldt nursing homes were transferred there two years ago when Brius shut down its Wish-I-Ah Skilled Nursing and Wellness Centre in Auberry (Fresno County, Calif.) after it was decertified by federal and state regulators. Wish-I-Ah residents were transferred more than 400 miles away, distancing them from family and friends. Such transfers from one facility to another can be traumatic for residents. If Brius’ plan is approved by the CDPH, Brius may transfer these same residents again, forcing them, in the ombudsmen’s words, to again “adjust to life in new surroundings, with new caregivers, new roommates, new health care providers, and new routines while having very little that is familiar to comfort them.”
“Mr. Rechnitz and his associates should not be allowed to repeat the act of moving residents from a troubled facility they own in one community to troubled nursing homes they own in distant communities,” states the letter.
The formal complaint, which also cites Brius’ lack of adequate planning for relocating residents as well as the company’s pattern of violating the laws governing nursing homes care, calls on the CDPH to place the three nursing homes under temporary state receivership until a suitable operator can take control of the facilities.
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Just how much money does Brius CEO Shlomo Rechnitz reap from vulnerable elders and their families? In this January 15, 2016, interview on ESPN Radio, Shlomo says he hauls in $3 billion a year.
That’s right — in a conversation about a Brius nursing home employee who supposedly had won $1.5 billion in the California lottery (it turned out to be a hoax), Shlomo remarks that $1.5 billion is about half his annual income.
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So why is Shlomo threatening to shut down three nursing homes in poverty-stricken Humboldt County? Shlomo claims he can’t afford to keep the facilities open and needs Medicare to give him more taxpayer dollars. He says he can’t afford to staff the nursing homes well enough.
Meanwhile, the company has racked up hundreds of patient care violations. Brius’ focus on profits over the care and well-being of its residents led the California Attorney General to brand the corporation as a “serial violator” of rules within the skilled nursing industry, and prompted the Los Angeles Long-Term Care Ombudsman to say that Brius demonstrates “flagrant disregard for human life.”
For more information, see BriusWatch.org.