Valley View not set to close

GOSHEN — Orange County has not submitted the state-required plan to close its nursing home, which halts the county executive’s previously announced intention to close Valley View Center for Nursing Care and Rehabilitation if the legislature did not pick a buyer by June 7.

The state requires 90 days’ notice before a nursing home can close, said Pat O’Dwyer, a former Democratic county legislator who opposes the sale or closure of Valley View.

The county executive, Ed Diana, discussed a time line at their most recent meeting, said Pat Matero, marketing executive at Valley View.

But no notice has been given, she said.

Before the state health department will allow a nursing home to close, it must submit a plan for how the sale or closure will be carried out.

All patients, residents, doctors, and sponsors must be notified in advance of closure.

“We really don’t know if the county put in the 90-day notice to close,” Matero said last Friday.

‘A war against the elderly’ Diana has lately come under fire over his plan to sell Valley View to a private bidder and his plan to build a new government center. Last week the legislature took the extraordinary step of launching a bipartisan investigation, complete with the power to issue subpoenas and call witnesses, into how the two matters have been handled.

Matero accused county officials of cruelty in threatening to close Valley View. They care more about building an expensive new government center for “stamping licenses,” she said, than preserving the lifeline for the county’s most vulnerable citizens.

“I am livid,” she said. “It’s a war being waged against the elderly.”

Valley View has 120 dementia beds. “It wouldn’t be easy placement” if the patients in these beds had to move, said Matero.

These patients may be moved up to 60 miles away, making visits by spouses more difficult or impossible. “How many octogenarians can travel 60 miles?” she asked.

Valley View would also lose the 20-day bed hold it now has when one of its residents leaves for the hospital, she said.

“They did not try to manage it,” she said of the county government and the nursing home. “We don’t like to face our mortality.”

By Pam Chergotis