By Jon King/jking@whmi.com


The head of a local nursing home chain says they are preparing for the possibility of a state order to accept COVID-19 patients into their facilities.

Mike Perry is CEO of The WellBridge Group, which operates eight assisted living and rehabilitation facilities including in Brighton, Pinckney and Fenton. As Michigan continues to be a hot spot of coronavirus infections, and hospital systems are reaching capacity, Perry says there are concerns of the medical system becoming overwhelmed. In New York, a mandate has been issued ordering nursing care facilities to accept COVID-positive patients. While that has not yet occurred in Michigan, Perry says they began preparing to deal with that possibility several weeks ago. On Saturday, WHMI reported that Caretel - a chain of assisted living facilities in Michigan - will be accepting COVID-19 patients for an isolated unit at its Brighton facility starting today.

Perry tells WHMI that one of the WellBridge facilities is already at about 50% capacity and they hope to be able to either transfer the remaining patients or discharge them home and turn that facility into a COVID-19 only unit that would be the single-point repository for those patients. He declined to identify which of their eight facilities that would be, citing concerns over security and the potential to create unnecessary panic.

Perry says they currently have three COVID-19 patients in their system, who are in complete isolation, quarantined to a separate section of the facility that has its own entrances with separate staff members working to care for them. He says maintaining the safety of all of their residents remains their top priority and they wouldn’t approve anything in which they felt that the well-being of their employees and residents was being compromised. As to the notion that WellBridge is looking to take on COVID-19 patients due to a financial incentive, Perry called that “totally preposterous” and said they’re buying PPE (personal protective equipment) at prices they’ve never seen and have received no indication that the federal money from the stimulus package will even come their way.

Perry said the best thing that the public can do is to wear homemade masks when out in public, so as to leave the medical masks for professionals. He says the last thing they want is for one of their workers to bring the virus into a facility after being infected while out in public.

You can hear Perry's full interview through the link below.