Louis Schwartz An owner of N.J. nursing home where bodies found
One of the owners of New Jersey's largest nursing home,
where at least 15 bodies were discovered crammed into a four-person morgue on
Monday, was a top executive at a collapsed chain of troubled nursing homes
previously investigated by NBC News.
Federal records show that Louis Schwartz is listed as a 50
percent owner of the Andover Subacute Facility I and II in Sussex County, where
the bodies were found. Public records also show that Schwartz was a vice
president at Skyline Healthcare, a now-defunct nursing home chain that was
plagued by allegations of neglect and mismanagement and the subject of more
than a dozen lawsuits.
Schwartz did not respond to a request for comment. The
Andover facility's co-owner, Chaim Scheinbaum, told NBC News in an email that
he was unclear what Schwartz's role was at Skyline but that Schwartz functioned
as a "silent partner" in the Andover property.
"We're not pleased with what is going on at the Andover
facility," New Jersey Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli said during a
news conference Thursday.
Persichilli said the Health Department had received
complaints, beginning last weekend, about bodies being stored at the facility.
A team of public health officials, including officials with the local health
department, was dispatched to inspect Andover.
"We called up the owner of the facility and notified
him of our concerns and required him to report back to us," Persichilli
said.
Andover Township police reportedly received an anonymous
tip, which led to the discovery of more than a dozen bodies in the facility's
small morgue.
Scheinbaum said there were 15 bodies in the morgue after
eight deaths Monday. He said authorities removed 13 bodies before midnight
Monday.
Andover Police Chief Eric Danielson said that there were 17
bodies in the morgue when police arrived Monday but that two were removed
before police arranged the removal of 13 more later in the day. He said the two
remaining bodies were removed Tuesday.
NBC New York reported that local officials said the nursing
home claimed that residents with the coronavirus were being housed on separate
floors or wings to stop the spread.
Scheinbaum told NBC News in a statement that the facility
was grappling with the pandemic.
"The owners, administrators and our heroic healthcare
staff of nurses and nurse aides have been working relentlessly to contain the
virus and safeguard our residents and staff," he wrote. "The health
and safety of our residents and staff is our utmost priority and
responsibility. Ownership and administration is working around the clock to
ensure we are able to resolve the pandemic in the facility."
Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney with the nonprofit
Center for Medicare Advocacy, called the discovery of the bodies at the New
Jersey nursing home "horrifying." But she said the link to Skyline
made it worse.
"To learn that the owners were former executives of a
nursing home chain that abandoned facilities across the country in 2017 and
2018, creating chaos for residents, staff, and states, magnifies the
horror," she said. "Government must limit ownership and management of
nursing homes to only those people that demonstrate commitment and capacity to
provide the best care possible to residents."
At its peak, Skyline owned or ran more than 100 facilities
in 11 states and oversaw the care of more than 7,000 elderly Americans.
According to Scheinbaum and public documents, Louis Schwartz is the son of
Joseph Schwartz, a former insurance broker and landlord who launched Skyline
Healthcare more than a decade ago.
The chain ultimately fell to ruin in 2018, displacing
hundreds of residents and leaving more than a dozen facilities shuttered in its
wake. Former employees filed suit accusing the company's owners of pocketing
their insurance premiums.
The plaintiffs in the suit have not been able to serve
Joseph Schwartz. NBC News was unable to reach Schwartz for a comment.
An NBC News investigation in July found that the company was
the subject of numerous complaints of extreme neglect that in some cases led to
death.
Multiple state investigations found instances of
stomach-churning neglect at Skyline Healthcare facilities, including failure to
bathe residents and maggots in a resident's personal medical equipment. In
Tennessee, a resident at one facility who had his leg amputated was found lying
in his own feces, with maggots and gangrene in his leg. He later died.
The Andover facility had problems before the discovery of
the bodies.
It was the subject of a January 2019 police report when
Terri Thompson's mother, a resident at Andover, wandered out of a locked unit
through two sets of broken automatic doors.
She was found in the parking lot at 4:30 a.m., sitting on
ice-covered ground without a coat, socks or shoes. It was 4 degrees below zero,
according to a police report, and she suffered from severe frostbite.
Thompson said that when she reached her mother's hospital
bed that morning, she could barely hear a heartbeat. Her mother's nails, which
she used to love to paint, had fallen off, as had much of the skin on her arms
and legs from the frostbite.
"I couldn't keep her safe, but they said they
could," Thompson previously told NBC News. "If someone did that to an
animal, they would be arrested."
Nathan Orr, who worked as an EMT in the county for several
years, told NBC News that he had been called to Andover frequently.
Staff members often seemed overwhelmed, he said. Residents'
beds were old and sometimes broken.
"It just seemed like every time we went there, things
were in disarray," he said.
"We'd get there sometimes and we couldn't find anyone
that knew anything about the patient," Orr said. "The response would
be: 'Oh, I don't know. That's not my patient. I don't know anything about
them.'
"You're just standing there shaking your head, because,
obviously, the more information you have when you get to the patient, the
better care you can provide for them," he said.
"It's one of those things where, once again, the
government is supposed to be regulating this," he added. "If anyone's
to blame other than the owner, I would say it's got to be the state."
New Jersey recorded its first coronavirus case on March 4
and its first coronavirus death on March 10. It has been one of the nation's
hardest-hit states.
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