To the editor: 

I wonder why there hasn’t been any public announcement that the Adult Care Center [Editor’s Note: now called the Care Center at Sunset Lake] in Liberty is not accepting any new patients. The ACC is a county owned nursing home and I think that the county owes the taxpayers some sort of notification. People are still hoping and trying to have their disabled loved ones admitted there. It would be better for them to know that the ACC is not currently admitting any patients than to add to their frustrations.

The reason for this freeze on admissions is that the ACC is currently undergoing the process of a Complaint Survey, which has placed the facility into the category of “Immediate Jeopardy.” Whether or not admissions will resume, it must be obvious that things at the ACC have gone from bad to worse. 

The census there is now 98, in a facility with 140 plus beds. I believe that the staffing situation there is their worse problem, and seems, at least to the management and their consultant there, to be impossible to fix. They seem to have no plan to address the re-establishment of a stable long-term staff. 

I hope that the Sullivan County Legislature will consider solutions such as increased marketing and providing incentives for hiring for county positions there, similar to what was offered during the pandemic, rather than just continuing to passively watch the facility’s decline. This is a situation that concerns all Sullivan County residents, who are paying for the mismanagement of the facility.

Lise Kennedy

Woodbourne

[Editor’s Note: The county denies that there is an active complaint survey underway. ]