SAN ANTONIO — Days after County Judge Nelson Wolff assured the public an east-side nursing center would likely not need to be used to cohort nursing home residents positive for COVID-19, people who live near the facility recorded a resident being moved in Monday morning.
The River City Care Center on the city's east side and Westover Hills were two facilities designated to house nursing home patients infected with the virus.
“Westover Hills first and I seriously doubt, considering where we are now, that it will ever reach the east side,” Wolff told KENS 5 on Friday.
But that plan derailed Monday morning, prompting concern from people who live near the facility. Two patients were moved in to the east-side facility, though why and how that happened wasn't immediately clear to local leaders during a daily COVID-19 briefing Monday night.
“The questions that you’re asking are the questions that I’m asking and we’re looking to get answers tonight,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said when asked why the residents were moved in to the east-side facility despite the push from local leaders to use the Westover Hills facility first.
Monday evening, River City Care Center's CEO, Gary Blake, sent KENS 5 the following statement, through the City of San Antonio.
“We were contacted by the Texas Ombudsman Program, which is an agency that advocates for nursing home patients, about providing care for two individuals who are COVID-19 positive and not hospitalized," Blake said. "Managing local ombudsmen Cindy Boyum and Heather Armstrong reached out and asked if we could take these patients, to provide a skilled level of care they would not receive at home. Ultimately, it was the families who made the decision to place their loved ones at River City Care Center and I'm grateful we can provide them a sense of comfort during such a difficult time.”
Precinct Four County Commissioner Tommy Calvert has been outspoken about the selection of the River City Care Center as a cohorting site. Calvert issued a statement last week which read, in part, “The optics of placing this in the heart of the black and brown community, where their probability to die is many times greater because of underlying health conditions does not give our community the confidence that the government is looking out for them.”
He said Monday people had reached out upset over the development.
“Obviously, people are pretty hot," Calvert said via phone. "And I think that, you know, part of the sentiment is it's hard to come back when officials have said one thing and then the residents video another. So they've got to do a job of bridging the rift."
During Monday's COVID-19 briefing, Nirenberg dispelled misconceptions about the arrangement, noting that the designation of the two facilities as cohorting sites was not the doing of local leaders.
"There is some misinformation out there suggesting that this is a city plan, or that it's a county plan, or that for some reason there's city money going in to pay these nursing homes to do this," Nirenberg said. "This is not true. We did not select these nursing homes, what we said is: 'Y'all, the nursing home ecosystem in San Antonio, needs to figure out a way to isolate known positives to make sure that the entire community is safe."
Creative Solutions in Healthcare and Keystone Care, LLC, which are the two largest nursing care providers in the city, designated the two facilities as the best locations to cohort patients positive for COVID-19.
The plan was instituted after a deadly COVID-19 outbreak at the Southeast Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, which accounts for nearly half of the 33 COVID-19 related deaths in Bexar County.
While understanding the concerns of those living near the two facilities, Nirenberg reminded the community of the compassionate side of things.
"These are people's grandparents, these are people's husbands and wives, they're our neighbors," Nirenberg said. "They need to have compassionate care. They need it in a safe place and they need it in a place where they might spend the last days or years of their lives. We're doing this in the safest manner according to the public health protocols."