‘We should not be accepting this’: Sullivan County nursing home in rough shape as officials wrangle over renovation – Valley News

UNITY — Lorraine Varnese was living in an assisted living facility when COVID-19 lockdowns first went into effect in March 2020.

Amid those lockdowns, Varnese, who is 78, lost some strength and experienced several falls, said her daughter Vanessa Perron, of Plainfield. It was enough so that after one fall, the facility refused to take her back from the hospital.

For a month this winter, Varnese, who grew up in West Lebanon and owned Joe’s Equipment in the Route 12A corridor for a time, waited in a bed at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon for a place at a nearby nursing home to open up. Perron was unable to go into the hospital to visit her mother and instead had to make do with window visits and phone calls.

Eventually, in March by the “grace of God,” Sullivan County nursing home in Unity offered Varnese a bed, Perron said.

Little did she know that the challenges were only beginning. Amid a COVID-19 lockdown this spring, Varnese went a full month without a shower, Perron said. The showers in the nursing home, which comprises three buildings, the oldest of which is 90 years old, are shared by as many as 41 residents who live on each floor. Residents couldn’t use them when they were confined to their rooms. Toilets are shared by as many as four residents.

“We should not be accepting this as being OK,” Perron said.

Perron does not blame the nursing home workers for her mother’s plight, but instead faults the Sullivan County delegation, which she says has been dragging its feet in deciding whether to move forward with a $54 million proposed renovation to upgrade the 156-bed facility’s infrastructure and bring it up to current codes. Part of that project, which has been in the works for several years, would be to reduce the number of residents sharing a shower to two, something that the nursing home’s workers say will improve residents’ sense of dignity and help to make the facility feel more like home.

A Thursday tour of the nursing home revealed leaking pipes, peeling plaster and crowded hallways, as well as busy employees working to meet residents’ needs for medication, activity and nourishment.

The three buildings illustrate an evolving approach to senior care. The Sanders building, constructed in 1931, has peeling plaster and visible pipes. Bathrooms with stalls sit at either end of a long hallway.

The building was constructed without any common areas for residents to interact, and it originally sat on top of the county jail. Residents haven’t lived there since 1997, but the building currently serves as office space for county employees. Due to heating issues, employees dress similarly in winter and summer months, said Mary Bourque, the county’s director of facilities & operations.

Employees “do what we need to do to make the mission happen,” Bourque said.

In the adjacent four-story Stearns building, which was constructed in the 1970s, water dripped from a leaking pipe in the ceiling into a red trash can next to a water fountain.

The county employs a full-time plumber to keep up with problems with the supply, waste and heating pipes, which Bourque said are “rotting from the inside out.”

The second floor of the Stearns building was bustling with 40 residents with varying degrees of illness and mobility. The hallway held wheelchairs and walkers that were too big to fit in residents’ rooms. Residents are two to a room, with a toilet shared by residents of two rooms.

With four people using a bathroom, “it can be a tragedy,” said Cecile Currier, a licensed practical nurse who is a unit manager at the nursing home.

“Renovations are a long time coming,” said Currier, a Unity resident who has worked at the facility for a total of 25 years.

Because not all rooms had showers, many residents weren’t able to shower during pandemic lockdowns, she said.

The MacConnell building, which was constructed in the late 1990s and is home to the county’s only dementia unit, still has just one shower room for the floor.

Four residents share a toilet, but each has their own window. The rooms also are bigger than those on Stearns, which allows more space for residents and staff to move around using wheelchairs, walkers and lifts.

The walls and doors on Stearns show marks from efforts at wheeling residents through doorways that weren’t built to accomodate them.

In the worst cases, staff have to help residents up out of their chairs to get them to the toilet, said Beth Renkowsky, unit manager on Stearns 1.

Depending on the resident’s weight that can be “very challenging,” she said.

Other tasks of daily living are made difficult by some of the built-in furniture, Renkowsky said. Residents struggle to get modern hangers on the rods in the built-in closets, she said.

Such are “things you would never think of,” she said.

Sullivan County nursing home is not alone in having older infrastructure and shared bathrooms. The Grafton County Nursing Home in North Haverhill comprises two buildings, one built in 1969 and an addition built in 2003, said Craig Labore, that nursing home’s administrator. The older portion has semi-private rooms in which four residents may share a toilet. The entire facility has communal shower rooms for all residents on a floor.

At this point, however, officials in Grafton County “are not having any substantive discussions on a remodel to our nursing home at this time,” Labore said.

As proposed, the Sullivan County nursing home renovation project would include demolishing the Sanders building to clear space for an 82,000-square-foot addition. It also would include gutting the Stearns building and making aesthetic improvements to the MacConnell building.

The delegation has made clear, however, that the $54 million price tag is too steep. At its July 27 meeting, it voted to create a working group to try to bring the cost down to $35 million.

That group will be chaired by state Rep. Brian Sullivan, D-Grantham, and also includes state Rep. Gary Merchant, D-Claremont; Rep. Judy Aron, R-Acworth; Rep. Skip Rollins, R-Newport; and County Commissioner George Hebert, R-Goshen.

The group is in the process of scheduling its first meeting, said state Rep. John Cloutier, D-Claremont, chairman of the delegation.

It’s not yet clear whether and how this group will be able to bring the down the project’s price tag and/or find federal or other grants to reduce the burden on county taxpayers.

On Friday, Sullivan said he was working to schedule the group’s first meeting, which he did not think would be public.

But Bourque and Ted Purdy, the facility’s administrator, said the situation is frustrating for them because they have put years into the project so far and each piece of it is tied to others.

Possible ways of reducing the project’s cost such as reducing the number of beds would cost the county more money down the road, they said.

There are “so many layers to it,” Bourque said.

As time goes by, Bourque said she expects the cost will increase as construction prices, regulations and interest rates grow. She said she’s concerned that the county may have “missed an opportunity to hit a sweet spot.”

Perron was moved to share her mother’s experience with members of the delegation following the July meeting at which the delegation created the working group.

Frustrated with the delegation’s inaction on a project that Perron and county employees say is necessary, Perron wrote to the delegates and asked them to put themselves in her mother’s position: “I challenge each of you, with today as your start date, to have a sponge bath for a month.”

Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.