Injuries, medication errors, expired food: ABC27 investigates county, state-owned nursing homes
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – ABC27 continues to investigate nursing homes after first reporting new, disturbing violations in Golden Living facilities.
Reports from the Department of Health over the last two years show violations and subsequent measures to fix problems in York and Cumberland county-owned nursing homes.
York County’s Pleasant Acres Nursing and Rehabilitation Center had the most violations. The last inspection made public happened in November.
The report says a resident fell out of his wheelchair and suffered a head injury. He started to have headaches, his pupils were not reacting to light, and his speech was garbled and slurred.
The nursing home notes say a doctor was notified two days after the fall, but the Department of Health says there’s no evidence of a doctor’s evaluation until nine days after the fall. That’s when the resident went to the hospital. Medical reports show he had a fracture.
Pleasant Acres Administrator Marlin Peck says after the Department of Health finished his inspection, his staff found evidence of the doctor’s evaluation from two days after the fall. It is standard practice for the department not to include documents found after the evaluation. ABC27 has not seen evidence of that evaluation.
In other reports, inspectors found “dried bowel movement” on a shower floor, a lack of evidence that some residents were bathed properly, a “medication error rate of 11.1 percent,” and in some cases, the facility flat-out not running tests that doctors ordered.
Inspectors also wrote about sanitary concerns in the kitchen in 2015 after they discovered some food in the pantry expired in 2011.
The Department of Health also wrote that the facility failed to provide care that “maintains or enhances each resident’s dignity and respect.”
That same violation was found in a July inspection of Claremont Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center in Cumberland County.
Other reports showed the facility “failed to maintain effective infection control techniques.”
There was also a 2014 violation of failing to “maintain clean and sanitary rooms.”
Additionally, there was an incident in 2014 when a patient sat outside for several hours and later went to the hospital for “neurogenic shock and severe hypothermia.”
Claremont Administrator Raymond Soto says the facility has made a lot of progress over the last several months; he took over as administrator in August 2015. He says recent inspections have gone well, and the facility is expecting an improvement in its CMS rating as a result.
South Mountain Restoration Center is the state-owned facility in Franklin County. It was only inspected five times in the last two years, but a March 2014 report does show violations.
They include failing to “carry out staff drills using their emergency procedures and evacuation techniques.” The facility also “failed to document the number of residents moved to another location during each fire drill.”
Paperwork from the Department of Health shows those practices changed shortly after that inspection.
All the nursing homes involved say they’ve fixed the violations and are currently following state and federal regulations.
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Filed under: General Problems
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