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LAUREL – To the staff at Hillcrest Care Center, they aren’t just caring for residents, they are caring for family.
So when caring for those family members was hampered by administration decisions, they decided to speak up. But instead of being heard to find a way to work together toward solutions, they felt turned away and silenced.
“We saw this coming and we tried to stop it but we were completely disregarded,” said Wendy Krei, a registered nurse at Hillcrest. “So here we are, and the dirt that has been swept under the rug became a mountain. And that mountain has become a volcano and it is erupting.”
Krei said shortly after bringing the center’s financial concerns to light 18 months ago, the facility’s advisory board was dissolved.
“The nursing home board started to ask questions and got more aggressive in those meetings in holding the administrator accountable,” she said.
Next, staff asked for an employee and resident survey. Instead, the employees were provided with a two-hour meeting and a change in the grievance policy that indicated all grievances would go to the administrator and not anyone higher up the chain, Krei said.
Feeling “muzzled,” employees decided to rally the public to attend the Laurel city council meeting Jan. 13. Staff posted signs around Laurel and on social media with the headline in capital letters, SAVE HILLCREST CARE CENTER.
“This was a very drastic step, yes, but we had to get the attention of the community. We had to let them know,” said Marsha Meier, business office manager at the facility for the last four years.
The community members responded to the fliers - so much so that the crowd of 65 who attended, and their elected representatives - had to be moved to a larger meeting space.
The city allowed Krei and a few others to speak but were unaware that so many of the public would attend and want to speak.
The audience became frustrated when trying to interject questions without any responses.
“The reasonable limits that were provided at the meeting were due to privacy concerns; names and positions of specific employees who did not consent to be discussed in an open meeting; confidential and concerns of disclosure of information which have not been reviewed and approved by the City of Laurel, and to reduce duplicity as this was a regular meeting and there are other matters which were on the agenda,” Holloway said in an interview with the newspaper Friday.
