CALAIS, Maine — Friday will be moving day for 82-year-old Marice Chaffee, although her daughter hasn’t had the heart to break the news.
“She’s been crying, so maybe somebody told her what’s happening,” Sue Claridge said Tuesday. “I won’t tell her until Friday.”
What’s happening is that the Maine Department of Health and Human Services has reaffirmed its decision to allow Calais’ only nursing home to be closed. Marice, who suffers from dementia, has called the 50-bed Atlantic Rehabilitation and Nursing Center home for the past two years. By week’s end she’ll be living at a nursing home in Machias, 45 miles from her daughter and her husband, Philip. At 89, he lives just a few blocks from the Calais nursing facility and now visits his wife of 65 years twice a day.
“Machias was the nearest opening we could find,” Claridge said Tuesday. “I have her on the waiting list for Eastport, but it could be a long wait. This has been very hard and very trying, not only for the families and the residents, but for the workers.”
The Portland-based firm that owns the 39-year-old facility has yet to announce a formal plan for locking the doors, although Claridge said Tuesday that First Atlantic Healthcare’s license expires at the end of this month. Closure will cost 92 workers their jobs.
Since word of the prospect of closure became public in January, the resident population has been dwindling steadily, with families scrambling to find new placements amid a chronic shortage of nursing homes throughout Washington County.
Calais Mayor Joseph Cassidy said Tuesday city officials will meet within the next week to brainstorm options for keeping the facility open.
“This decision threw us for a loop,” he said in a telephone interview. “We’re not happy with how this turned out, and it has left us scrambling. But, now that we know where things stand, we can look at all the options, which include city ownership or having it be hospital-run.”
First Atlantic Healthcare CEO Kenneth Bowden has suggested that the city consider buying and running the facility. State reimbursement rates for nonprofit entities that operate nursing homes are higher than rates for private-sector firms like his, Bowden said at a recent public hearing.
This is absolutely wrong and despicable. We are treating our fellow Americans, whose only crime is to work hard all their lives and grow old, like disposable garbage.
This is one of the most shameful things I have ever seen . It is very unethical. It is egregiously immoral. It is pathetic, and I want to say now that I am sickened by any cold calculating financial mathematics that purports to justify such cruelty to our fellow Mainers.
What is wrong with us? Why are we doing such things?
Never in all my many decades did I think we would come to this. This is worst lowest point I have seen in our treatment of our fellow citizens.
Too many people drank too much tea and we ended up with LePage. No Democratic governor would have allowed this.
To quote Mr Cassidy…I think this has thrown a LOT of people for a loop…Calais without a nursing home make life very difficult for a LOT of people…Be interested to see what Mr Mustard has to say,,,most likey NOTHING…He is so part of the LePage gang…He will lose in June primary..
Sure , just close the doors on our neighbors , friends and family.
Easy to do sitting in Portland.
Tough to take sitting in Calais with an old friend.
Here is a challange for the Republican representatives of Washington County. It isn’t from ALEC, MHPC or the Tea Party. It is from one of the citizens of Washington County.
I challenge you to write legislation that would change the dynamics that is allowing First Atlantic or any other company from moving beds from this or any other county. For this you will have to actually write the legislation yourselves. You will have to tell Mary Mayhew where to go. You will need to sell this to your fellow Republicans in Augusta. I highly doubt that you will have any problem getting by-partisan support for such legislation.
It is without question the right thing to do for your constituents. Do not allow First Atalntic to take much needed beds from this county.
While you are at it maybe you could light a fire under the seat of our investigator in chief Charlie Summers to investigate the close relationship between First Atlantic and Mary Mayhew of DHHS.
My 85 year old mother, a proud and thrifty survivor of the Great Depression, suffered a devastating stroke 4 years ago. She is paralyzed, cannot speak, and has intellectual deficits. She’s in long term nursing home care. Her care is very very expensive. The nursing home is mostly reimbursed via Mainecare, which means they have to cut corners wherever they can. Meantime my sister is “disabled” with “bipolar” (I remember well when she was doctor-shopping to get that coveted diagnosis). She’s now on section 8 housing, EBT, gets a SSD check, Mainecare pays for a nurse who comes to her house for med checks, and she also has someone come to her house twice a week to prompt her to clean her house!! Her caseworker takes her to all her doc appointments (and charges Maine for mileage and vehicle depreciation) even though my sister has a car and can go shopping whenever she likes. Before we blame LePage, republicans, etc etc we need to take a hard look at those who are taking advantage of our limited resources – it’s not the elderly. A lot of it is being done by people looking to get what they can for free, and the state workers who are more than willing to encourage that kind of behavior so they can keep their jobs!
Amen, quakerlace. It’s not LaPAge as man would like to believe qnd point their fingers at. ME is in this mess because of the lazy slackers sucking off the system
Thanks to the Bangor Daily News and WABI for keeping this in the public eyes to see how they are treating our senior citizens. I hope these people realize this will probably kill my Mom in 3 months (loneliness and unfamiliar people). My Dad lost his wife of 65 years to the nursing home but at least he was able to visit twice a day and now he won’t be able to do this. You have broke his heart Mary Mayhew and DHHS. And to Ken Bowden hope when your time comes you have to be 500 miles from your family and friends.I feel if this was handled different it might have been saved. God bless all you who helped take care of my MOM. I am going to miss you all.
Sure must be nice for the folks in Washington County that Kevin Raye is their State Senator as well as the President of the Maine Senate. Probably the second most powerful man in Maine. Has he helped out the people who elected him? His silence in this matter as been deafening.
The nursing home is obviously is losing money. Why not let all of the people , and the town, buy it . If the nursing home was telling the people what to do with their land and business, people would be running them out of town.
Mr. Mustard goes with the flow. A good ol’ boy who helps his own