A task force appointed by the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders is searching for solutions to an issue that officials have been dealing with for several years — the county’s two nursing homes are losing millions of dollars each year.
The freeholders named the members of the task force in mid-November, but it is not certain when the panel will report its findings to the board and the public.
Freeholder Director Lillian Burry has said the task force will seek any and all possible solutions to the financial issues the nursing homes have caused.
Since 2007, the John L. Montgomery Care Center, Freehold Township, and the Geraldine L. Thompson Care Center, Wall Township, have cost the county about $45 million, according to Monmouth County Freeholder John Curley. “With the county losing so much money due to the operation of these nursing homes, in my opinion it is not economically feasible to keep them under the county’s control. The best thing to do is to sell them to a private entity to make them work better and be more profitable,” Curley said.
Burry and Curley are serving on the task force along with the following county and municipal officials:
Teri O’Connor, Monmouth County administrator
Andrea I. Bazer, Monmouth County counsel
Vincent M. Petrosini, care center representative and administrator of the John L. Montgomery Care Center
Cheryl Carnes, care center representative and administrator of the Geraldine L. Thompson Care Center Craig Marshall, financial representative
Andrew Melnick, financial representative
Pamela Murphy, union representative
Ann Marie Conte, Wall Township representative.
A representative from Freehold Township has not yet been appointed to the task force.
The county’s finances have been affected as the federal health care law draws money from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Medicaid is the primary source of funding for both of the county care centers, according to Curley.
“At the rate we are going, we are going to be losing jobs which will also affect the care of the patients in these centers,” he said. “As elected officials, one of our many responsibilities is to maintain the quality of care in these facilities and to also make sure employees in these care centers are taken care of, too.
“In my opinion the task force is a pampering of the real issue at hand to the public. There is a necessity to allow private corporations to handle this problem,” Curley said.
At the freeholders’ Nov. 25 meeting, Burry said the first item on the agenda for the task force would be to visit the two care centers and to take stock of the situation at each location. The visits were scheduled for Dec. 2.
— Taylor M. Lier