Linda Manor director of assisted living resigns after families raise alarm over patient care

By BRIAN STEELE

Staff Writer

Published: 02-09-2022 11:23 AM

NORTHAMPTON — Darly Henry, the director of Linda Manor Assisted Living in Leeds for the past year, has resigned effective Feb. 18 amid an ongoing controversy with residents’ families over an alleged deterioration of the quality of care in the Life Enrichment Memory Care Program (LEP) for seniors with dementia.

News of Henry’s resignation came Tuesday, the day after the Gazette reported that two separate outbreaks of COVID-19 at Linda Manor’s nursing home and assisted living program infected 86 seniors — 18 of them in the 20-unit LEP — and 88 staff members between Dec. 10 and this week. Two seniors in the nursing home and two in the LEP have died, according to Linda Manor’s owner, Berkshire Healthcare Systems.

Also this week, state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, joined the families of nine LEP residents in a virtual meeting with Linda Manor and Berkshire Healthcare Systems leadership to work out a response to the families’ concerns, many of which are unrelated to the coronavirus outbreaks.

Reached by phone Tuesday night, Henry declined to comment.

According to an email to residents’ families sent by Berkshire Healthcare Systems vice president of housing Al Ingegni on Tuesday, Henry will be replaced on an interim basis by Emily Uggicioni, the former assisted living director whom Henry succeeded in February 2021. Uggicioni is currently the executive director of Day Brook Village Senior Living in Holyoke.

“We thank Darly for her work and dedication over the last year and wish her well in her future endeavors,” the email reads. “Emily will start her new role next week and we welcome her back. We will be actively recruiting for a new permanent Executive Director effective immediately.”

The former director of health services is returning to that position on an interim basis, the email reads, in order to provide “a strong clinical presence as we move to resolve many of the concerns raised by our families.” Ingegni told the Gazette on Monday that the program had hired a new activities director to fill a vacancy, but he has COVID-19 and must wait until next week to start.

LEP proxies come together

The Life Enrichment Memory Care Program (LEP) is a wing of the Linda Manor Assisted Living building at 345 Haydenville Road in Leeds with 20 apartments for residents with dementia. The building also hosts a traditional assisted living program with 64 apartments.

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Less than six months after Henry took over as director last February, LEP residents’ health care proxies began organizing a campaign to fight what they say is a stark decline in the quality of care their loved ones receive. Six of the proxies detailed their allegations in a letter to Henry, Berkshire Healthcare Systems administrators and the adult protective agency Greater Springfield Senior Services Inc., on Jan. 11, and they say that three more families have since joined the effort.

“I do feel that they are making a real effort to address the issues here,” Ginetta Candelario, one of the proxies, said Tuesday. “What I can’t help but also feel is that, had we not gotten together and been such a highly resourced group, this could have been horrific. The consequences could have been really, really bad, and they were bad enough.”

In the 25-page letter, the proxies claim that one resident “is routinely being left in her bed … for upwards of 15 hours at a time, leaving her in wet and soiled diapers or desperately trying to get to the bathroom unassisted as a result ... (C)alls for assistance using the emergency pull cord have repeatedly gone unanswered,” and the resident has lain undiscovered on the floor for hours following falls.

Multiple proxies reported that their loved ones’ medications are routinely late and administered incorrectly by staff, whereas meals are sometimes hours late and not in compliance with the residents’ dietary restrictions.

“Is this how you would like to be treated if you were dependent on others to help you during the final years of your life?” the letter reads. “Would this be good enough for your mother/wife/sister/friend? If it is not, how can you condone it for ours?”

Berkshire Healthcare Systems representatives said they could not discuss individual resident care because of federal privacy laws.

Committed to improvement

Both the proxies and Berkshire Healthcare Systems say that part of the problem is ongoing staffing shortages, which are not unique to Linda Manor or its assisted living program. Linda Manor is using outside, non-permanent staff to fill in the gaps, an increasingly common practice in the eldercare industry right now.

“We continue to work really hard to attract people to our industry” with good wages and bonuses, said Lisa Gaudet, a Berkshire Healthcare Systems spokeswoman.

The proxies wrote that more than a dozen staff members in the LEP have left their positions in the past year, many of them to take other jobs in the eldercare industry, and the position of director of nursing has been vacant for several months.

“They’re doing the best they can, but they’re in a context that is inadequate in terms of systemic operations,” Candelario said.

The letter asks that the facility “stop admitting new residents into the LEP until staffing levels and ratios are normalized”; hire a head nurse as soon as possible; increase professional development, training and supervision; and provide daily emails about staffing levels and COVID-19 data, among other changes like a monthly “town hall” meeting to discuss issues and ask questions.

Ingegni, the Berkshire housing vice president, said the nonprofit organization is conducting an investigation into the letter’s claims in order to “formulate a response to the concerns and come out on the other side. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. … We really need to figure out what went wrong and bring it back to a level of acceptability for everybody.”

Greater Springfield Senior Services is involved in the investigation, as well.

Jill Landis, vice president of quality control for Berkshire Healthcare Systems, said that “it’s a little too early in our investigation to tell you, as a reporter, what the underlying issues are. … We’ve taken this seriously from the first time we received this letter. We’re committed to system improvement here at Linda Manor, particularly at the Life Enrichment Program.”

She said Linda Manor leadership has agreed to make improvements in the quality and amount of care for each resident, increase transparency around medication audits and service plan updates, provide more staff training opportunities and communicate regularly about COVID-19 test results.

State regulations, she said, do not allow the assisted living program to end admissions at will.

Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.]]>