Benjamin Healthcare staff second to none

The Edgar P. Benjamin Healthcare Center prides itself on a sense of comfort, a feeling that Berthelina “Bea” Spriggs attributes to the attitudes of the center’s devoted employees.

“My nurses here are tremendous,” said Spriggs, who has served as Benjamin’s director of nursing for the past three years. “The quality of care is excellent. In the hallways, the residents will greet me and tell me how well my staff takes care of them.”

That is music to the ears of Myrna Wynn, the center’s president and CEO. “We have employees with longevity, some with over 30 years at Benjamin,” Wynn said. “I’ll put our nursing up against any top-rate facility. We are a family here.”

But quality service is not the issue at the center. The problem is money. When Wynn took the reins at Benjamin fourteen years ago, she inherited a building in dire need of renovations.

Fourteen years later, that need remains unmet — and the situation has gone from bad to worse.

In 2003, the nine-person volunteer board of directors that oversees the nonprofit nursing home compiled a “determination of need” to define in hard numbers what it would take to modernize the aging building. The answer? Over $10 million.

Some of that money comes from the state, but a sizable balance remains. To bridge the gap, the center’s board of directors launched a capital campaign with the goal of raising $2.5 million dollars by the end of 2008.

They look to make significant progress toward that number at the home’s 80th anniversary gala, which will be held on May 4 at Lombardo’s in Randolph. The celebration will honor five lifetime achievers 80 years or older selected from various local church congregations, organizations with which Wynn hopes to reconnect.

“Local churches were the backbone support of this institution for many years when there was no welfare or Social Security,” Wynn said. “We are going to reach out to them and hope that they will support us at our gala.”

Funds raised by the campaign will go toward renovation costs not reimbursed by the state, as well as nursing assistant training programs, technology upgrades for better equipped nurses’ stations and more modern HVAC, elevator and fire alarm systems.

“There’s certain funding that we can get from the state, but we have to get the facility into a certain financial position and a positive track record,” said Perry Smith, chairman of Benjamin’s board of directors.

While consistent excellence in personal care is the benchmark for establishing such a track record, it helps to have boosters willing to talk you up in the community. One of those people is state Rep. Gloria Fox, who has represented Suffolk County’s Seventh District, which includes Mission Hill, for over 20 years.

Fox worked in human services before entering politics and has a strong devotion to Benjamin, the largest minority-operated nonprofit nursing facility in the Commonwealth.

“In addition to [Benjamin’s] geriatric program, Roxbury Preparatory Charter School is also housed in the building, making it even more of a landmark program,” said Fox. “Coupling young people with seniors is a great way to teach youth the history of how Roxbury was maintained by a population that didn’t always have big money and resources, but learned how to live cooperatively by sharing the wealth amongst themselves.”

But despite its local impact and the quality of its service — evidenced by the state Department of Public Health marking Benjamin “deficiency-free” in 1999 and 2006 inspection surveys — the center remains vulnerable to state and federal funding cuts. During the last five years, those cuts have forced the closing of 103 nursing homes across the state.

“We face even more problems [than other health centers] because the people we serve, whether they are white, African American or Hispanic, are predominantly from lower economic backgrounds,” Smith said. “So we have a very heavy preponderance of Medicaid residents, making it more difficult to operate efficiently [because] the money that comes from the state to support Medicaid patients is much less than [privately insured patients].”

Another problem, according to Wynn, is that many of those responsible for referring hospital patients to nursing homes do not recommend Benjamin.

“On four recent occasions we had families requesting their loved ones come here, but they were placed elsewhere,” Wynn said. “When people are in the hospital, they are steered into health care institutions they are not willing to go to. Families have a choice as to where they want to send their loved ones.”

And sometimes you have to fight to exercise your right to make that choice. Just ask Harry Bor.

“When I was sick in the hospital, I told the doctor that I had to go to rehab, and he told me that I could only go to one particular group,” said Bor, a 64-year-old Navy veteran who suffers from diabetes, neuropathy and carpal tunnel syndrome. He is also legally blind. “I told him I could go wherever I wanted, and that was to the Benjamin Health Care Center.”

Bor initially knew about the quality of Benjamin’s care through his brother, who used to work in the center’s human relations department. These days, he knows about it through personal experience, even giving the home credit for saving his life.

Overweight and unable to walk when he arrived 15 months ago, Bor can now travel with the use of a walker, and occasionally even under his own power.

“When I came here I couldn’t do anything for myself,” he admitted. “Nothing. And they brought me all the way to where I am today.”

The home has allowed Bor to not only survive his difficult condition, but to thrive in spite of it, thanks to Benjamin’s family-oriented environment and the support of his own family, who volunteer a great deal of time and money to the center.

“The management staff is wonderful. They treat us with respect and we, in turn, treat them the same way,” said Bor.

Stories like Bor’s serve as testimony to the importance of facilities like Benjamin. But when beds remain unfilled, Benjamin loses money. Wynn said the center now has 20 beds open, each of which represents an annual loss of $50,000.

In the meantime, Wynn and the center’s staff focus on the beds that are filled by patients like Geraldine Boyd.

“I like the good treatment,” said Boyd, 86, who has been a Benjamin patient for five years. “If I run into a little difficulty, we chat it over and it’s all ironed out. I like Myrna and Bea because they are nice and fair, and that’s what is most important.”