The latest push in the recovery of the Edgar Benjamin Healthcare Center? Christmas coming early
Even as summer temperatures beat down, for the about 70 residents of the Edgar Benjamin Healthcare Center on Mission Hill, Christmas is coming.
The center is launching a fundraiser this week to bring new supplies and resources to the facility to support operations and care for patients.
A list of asks, which was set to be released Wednesday, will solicit donations of things like air conditioning units for patient rooms, improved wi-fi and computers to fix a system that often struggles, and an industrial-sized, six-burner stove for the kitchen, which currently uses the three functional burners of its four-burner stove.
The fundraiser comes as the facility wraps its fourth month under a receivership, following a petition filed in Suffolk County Superior Court at the end of March by the Lawyers for Civil Rights, on behalf of patients and their families.
The petition claimed there was an emergency at the facility borne out by poor leadership by the center’s former management, which led to deferred maintenance and staff going weeks without pay.
Dianne Wilkerson, the center’s executive assistant, said the seed for the drive came following the early-April receivership decision, when community members and business leaders reached out to attorney Joseph Feaster, the court-appointed receiver, looking to support the center as it aimed to bounce back from a then-pending closure announced in February by the center’s old executive director, Tony Francis.
For example, also on the list are two salon chairs to go in the center’s currently unused beauty salon, following an offer from local beauticians to come in and do residents hair.
“One of the positive things that happened as a result of the attention and the focus in the press when they learned about happened at Benjamin with the appointment of the receiver … was people — corporate leaders, political leaders, regular citizens, neighborhood and community folks — were calling saying, ‘What can I do to help?’” Wilkerson said.
The Christmas in July drive is one of a number of developments at the facility as it looks to determine whether long-term operations of the center are financially feasible.
At the end of June, approaching the end of the 90 days the receivership was initially set to last, the court granted a six-month extension, following a request by Feaster and the residents’ family members who initially petitioned for a receivership.
In an official report filed with the court the same day, Feaster called the next six months “critical” to determining the potential longevity of the center. The question of whether the center will be able to stay open long-term has hovered nearby since the receivership was ordered.
“I feel very confident that we’re heading in the right direction, such that I will be able, I believe, to answer that question in the time allotted,” he said in an interview.
Under his leadership, the center has also worked to flesh out its full-time leadership staff. In May, the Edgar Benjamin hired a new full-time administrator, Delicia Mark, who had previously worked at the center almost two decades before. The facility also hired Hannah Kromah to work as the center’s human resources director.
And the Edgar Benjamin has pushed beautification efforts of the facility, painting resident rooms and running a flower-planting day with residents and staff, following an earlier refresh of the building’s lobby.
Those efforts could be important steps to increasing the facility’s resident count, one step leadership is hoping will help bring in increased funds and keep it open.
“We know that it makes a big difference when people walk in to determine whether this is a place where they want to have a loved one,” Wilkerson said.
The process hasn’t been without difficulty.
For more than a month following the receivership order, the website for the state’s Division of Health Care Facility Licensure and Certification still said the facility was closing at the start of July, even as the Edgar Benjamin looked to bring in new residents and the increased funding that comes with them.
In May, the Department of Public Health completed an unannounced survey of the facility, which is required for its recertification and had been delayed due to the pending closure, which identified four “low-level” deficiencies.
The center is also still working to catch up on several federal and state requirements like the paying a quarterly provider tax, submitting cost reports and completing for all residents the Preadmission Screening Resident Review, a federally mandated tool used to ensure facilities comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Feaster said that, with full-time leadership now installed at the center, he’s taking a less hands-on approach, but he will continue to work to address the requirements, while also pushing back on some that he said are asking for information the center doesn’t have access to. He said that, if necessary, he expects to be able to get support from the courts, to whom he reports as receiver, to work out any issues.
“Under the receivership, we will attempt to address it, but I have no intentions of our getting a negative hit with regards to that,” he said. “That’s where I will get the court involved in order to say that it’s unreasonable to hold me to a standard in terms of three months when we don’t have the ability or the information to be responsive to that.”
And though the Edgar Benjamin hasn’t missed payroll since early April — one of the key pieces under the former administration that ultimately led to the Attorney General and Department of Public Health supporting the receivership claim — some of those payments were paid through advances on Medicare reimbursement funds paid by the state’s MassHealth Office of Long-Term Services and Supports.
Those advances have racked up over $506,000 due back to the MassHealth office as the facility looks for a way to sustainably support itself in the long term.
“On a financial basis, you’re either going to increase your revenue or decrease your expenses, so that’s one aspect — looking at whether we can stabilize it by doing that,” Feaster said.
He said the center is also working “aggressively” to get payments that were owed to theEdgar Benjamin but never collected, something he said is set to bring in a couple hundred thousand dollars.
As another avenue to increase revenue, the Edgar Benjamin is looking to expand the services it offers, planning a renovation of the currently defunct portion of the building in its eastern wing to convert it into a dialysis treatment facility. Wilkerson said that step could be important in supporting the center financially, while also recognizing the prevalence of diabetes in Boston’s Black and brown communities.
According to city data, 14.6% of Boston’s Black residents had diabetes, compared to 8.8% of city residents overall. In nearby Roxbury, the city’s public health commission found about 15% of residents had diabetes. The disparity put the condition, alongside other cardiometabolic diseases, at the center of the first step in a new city agenda to decrease life expectancy gaps in Boston, announced July 10.
Wilkerson said the center estimates a $2.7 million budget to make the transition but might be on its way to finding some of that funding. On July 11, the state Senate passed its version of a $2.8 billion economic development bill that included an amendment from Sen. Liz Miranda, whose district includes the Edgar Benjamin, to allocate $1 million to the development of the dialysis center.
That bill is now under consideration by a conference committee — a group of six legislators tasked with ironing out differences between the Senate’s version and the House’s before the end of the legislative session at the end of the month.
“We’re going to be lobbying, asking people to weigh in, call the Senate president, call the speaker [of the House] to make sure that that amendment stays in the bond bill that’s delivered to the governor’s desk,” Wilkerson said.
