Patient moved from Jacksonville Beach nursing home dies

Avante at Jacksonville Beach shut down ventilator care program, moved 2 patients

JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. – One of two patients on ventilators moved last week from Jacksonville Beach to Ormond Beach when Avante shut down its ventilator care program has died.

Heather Duby Jarvis said her 75-year-old mother, Noreen Duby, died five days after she was moved 90 miles away from her family.

Jarvis said her greatest fear was that the stress of the move would kill her mother. 

"Our position was always that we felt a transfer of this magnitude would accelerate her death and we were fighting to keep her where she was so that she could end her life peacefully and in close proximity to family and friends," Jarvis said. 

Avante told the I-TEAM that it was not financially feasible to maintain the ventilator program at the Jacksonville Beach care center and notified the families of Duby and Abdo Rustom in April that they would be moved to its facility in central Florida.

Both families told News4Jax that their parents received good care while at the facility, but that it seemed unfair and overwhelming for their family to be over an hour away from their loved one. 

I-TEAM: Jacksonville Beach nursing home to transfer patients away from families

Avante has not responded to an email about Mrs. Duby’s death. Jarvis said Avante did express its condolences to her family.

Avante at Jacksonville Beach is a for-profit nursing home with 165 beds for patients, and it cost patients on average of $295 a day to live there.

The facility is currently about 76 percent occupied, with 126 patients living there, according to state records. It’s currently licensed, but that license expires at the end of August.


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