Sutter Health’s CPMC finds new home for Alzheimer’s patients.
California Pacific Medical Center — which is shutting down San Francisco’s only subsidized Alzheimer’s residential care center — has offered to relocate most of the facility’s residents to another elder care center in southwestern San Francisco.
CPMC, which is owned by Sutter Health, says it will cover the cost of moving 14 of the 17 residents from the Irene Swindells Alzheimer’s Residential Care Program, in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights neighborhood, to AlmaVia, near Lake Merced. CPMC has offered to subsidize the residents’ stay at AlmaVia, which is operated by the Elder Care Alliance, so that families can continue to pay the same rates they did at Swindells.
Swindells is the only Alzheimer’s residential care center in the city that offers deep discounts for residents and their families based on their financial need. Families generally pay between $2,000 and $9,000 each month, with many paying on the lower end of the scale because fees are subsidized as much as 50 percent by philanthropic contributions to the CPMC foundation.
“The families have been asking that residents be able to stay together as a group, in San Francisco, and not face cost increases,” said CPMC CEO Dr. Warren Browner. “We’re pleased we’ve been able to achieve these goals.”
Sutter plans to close Swindells by the end of 2018 as part of CPMC’s move to a newly constructed campus at Van Ness Avenue and Geary Street. Swindells, which opened in 1997, is the only CPMC service that will be discontinued after the move. Other medical services — including emergency medicine, pediatrics and oncology — will continue at the new campus, which is scheduled to open in 2020. Sutter officials say this is because the health system wants to focus on acute
care.
The impending closure of Swindells highlights what aging advocates and officials say is a growing problem in San Francisco: the availability of affordable residential care for dementia patients is dwindling at the same time the over-60 population is increasing. Swindells was licensed for 25 beds, while AlmaVia will accommodate 14. AlmaVia overall houses 41 people.
Officials with CPMC and the Elder Care Alliance say they have signed a letter of intent signaling that if Swindells residents so choose, they can complete the move to AlmaVia by July.
AlmaVia runs assisted living and memory care units, and will expand its memory care staff and facilities to accommodate 14 Swindells residents. The other three Swindells residents may be moved to hospice or another facility, according to relatives of Swindells residents who have been meeting with CPMC officials about the closure.
“We’re really happy,” said Dawn Astorga, whose 89-yearold mother has Alzheimer’s and has lived at Swindells for three years. “They worked really hard to have a good ending.”
Some residents’ relatives are concerned that the Swindells staff — many of whom have worked with the same residents for years — will not move to AlmaVia because they have a union contract with Sutter. Ann Ludwig, whose husband, Karl, has dementia and has lived at Swindells for three years, said she would have preferred that CPMC move Swindells residents to another CPMC facility. Ludwig is considering their offer to relocate Karl to AlmaVia.
“There are lots of questions and things to be resolved from our point of view before we’re sure this is going to be a good move for us,” Ludwig said. “We really want to know they can provide that level of care and staffing we need.”