A month after Narraguagus Bay Health Care announced its plan to close, all but one of its 46 residents had been relocated from the facility in Milbridge, Maine. And early on a Monday morning in June, an ambulance crew arrived to transport the final resident an hour away to a facility in Belfast.
The crew wheeled the woman on a stretcher down a bare hall that once sported artwork and photographs.
It has not been an easy time, housekeeping supervisor Cindy Roggenback told Maine Public.
“Those people were my family,” she said. “I’m losing my second home that meant a lot to me.”
“This is probably one of the better jobs I’ve had for feeling good about yourself,” said Robert Prescott, a fellow housekeeper. “A lot of people go home from work and hate their job. You make people happy here some days.”
Relocating can become traumatic
Over the past decade, 26 nursing homes in Maine have closed. And as the numbers shrink, it is becoming more difficult to relocate residents within 60 miles, a regulation mandated by the state.
“That really is the goal, is that you want to place people not more than 60 miles away,” said Brenda Gallant, Maine’s Long-Term Care Ombudsman. Her office advocates for residents of long-term care facilities. “Sometimes that’s impossible if you can’t find a provider that has an open bed, or there’s a facility that can’t meet the resident needs.”
That was the case for John Drollett, who was relocated from Narraguagus Bay Health Care nearly three hours away to Lewiston.
“Don’t get your hopes up that they’re going to find you a place like they say they are, because right now, they’re dwindling fast,” Drollett said.
More than two months after he moved, his longtime partner, Kathy Parsons, has not been able to visit. They have to rely on phone calls.
“Having him so far away is awful,” she said.
Parsons said they were blindsided by the closure of Narraguagus Bay. And it was made even worse because they felt they had no options.
“They were like, ‘Well, this is all we’ve got.’ Well, we had no say in it. None. It wasn’t even a conversation,” she said. “It was just, ‘This is gonna happen.’”
Beyond the hardship of a long drive, Gallant said relocating can be traumatic for residents.
“They can suffer from relocation stress, they can have a decline in condition,” she said. “Increase in falls, depression, there are many studies that document this.”
Closures in New England 3 times the national rate
Closures are happening across the United States, but a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that the rate of nursing home closures in New England is three times the national rate — and Maine had the highest percentage of closures in the region. The report also found that from 2022 to 2023, more than half of facilities in each New England state operated at a loss.
“The last two years have been awful,” said Dr. Steve Weisberger, who owned Narraguagus Bay Health Care for 30 years.
He said the real trouble started with a staffing crisis during the pandemic. He was forced to use agencies that provided ‘travel’ nurses at a much higher cost. And that never changed.
“The way it was going, we were going to have almost a million-dollar loss this year.”
Maine has made efforts to train more direct care workers and boost their pay, which currently must be at least 125% of the minimum wage. But the Maine Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes, said it is unclear whether state efforts will be enough to prevent more closures.
Each move is like starting over
And that means more residents will likely have to relocate — sometimes several times.
“My dad is not having a good end of life,” said Samantha Jones, of Blue Hill.
Jones had already moved her father from another facility into Narraguagus Bay earlier this year. He had only been there for 10 weeks when officials announced that it was closing.
“The idea of moving him again, it feels unconscionable,” she said. “Like, why would you do that to a healthy person, let alone, you know, a person who has memory problems?”
Each move is like starting over, and she has to advocate for him all over again. After spending his life as a teacher and giving to the community, she said, it’s not fair that her dad keeps losing his.
This story was originally published by Maine Public. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
