Three years after announcing a controversial plan to close its money-losing longterm and acute care facility, the nursing home at the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Woodland Hills campus has defied the odds to remain open.
Thanks to a sustained grassroots campaign from Saving the Lives of Our Own, a collection of residents and their families, the MPTF board has abandoned plans to the shutter the home, pledging to keep the facility open if it can find a partner.
However, the nursing home is a shadow of what it once was. At a busy facility that once offered the “gold standard” in comprehensive care for the aged and frailest members of the Hollywood community, there are only a handful of residents who remain behind.
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The number of patients has dwindled to 29 from the nearly 140 people who called the facility home when the closure was first announced, officials say. Some residents moved in the wake of the closure announcement, others succumbed to old age and disease.
“As the residents of the longterm care unit are dying, the mattresses are rolled up and the lights are turned out, but no one new is coming in,” Richard Stellar, a blogger for TheWrap and a member of Saving the Lives of Our Own, said. “It’s a war of attrition.”
The result is a kind of limbo. Long-term care has not closed, but with the MPTF management loath to admit new long-term patients until it secures a partner to share the burden of keeping the facility operating, the doors to the nursing home remain closed to new residents.
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Administrators at the MPTF say that they have learned their lesson and that they are fully committed to keeping longterm care as part of their offerings.
“We heard the industry’s reaction and I think we responded to it,” MPTF Chief Executive Officer Bob Beitcher told TheWrap. “The unit is stable and we believe we are continuing to provide excellent care.”
Resident’s families still praise the nursing staff at the home, but say that residents have grown depressed as their friends die with no fresh faces joining their ranks. Where once the halls of the longterm care facility bustled with activity, resident’s family members say that the nursing home has become a bleak environment.
“It’s an empty place,” Maria-Flora Smoller, whose mother is a resident at the facility, told TheWrap. “The people that work there do the best they can, but the atmosphere has changed. My mom made great friends there, but sadly many have passed away and there are no new friends to be made because no one new is coming in to talk about the old times and what they have in common.
