Florida Nursing Home Barred from Admissions
Posted by Patti on February 25th, 2006 / Print This Post
A Florida nursing home has been banned from excepting new admissions.
TALLAHASSEE — Saying a Port Charlotte nursing home failed to take steps to stop sexual abuse and other problems, state regulators have issued an emergency order to prevent the Peace River Nursing and Rehabilitation Center from accepting new residents.The incident has also led the federal government to halt any Medicare or Medicaid payments to the Charlotte County nursing home.
The new patient moratorium is the first the state has imposed on a nursing home in more than a year. The last moratoriums were issued in 2004, when the state issued three bans for nursing homes that had problems.
The problems at Peace River occurred in a secured unit housing some of the facility’s most vulnerable residents — those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
The state Agency for Health Care Administration initially discovered the problems during a survey of the 104-bed home in late January. The home has about 70 residents.
During the inspection, the state regulators “discovered several serious instances of resident abuse,” including sexual abuse, according to ACHA’s emergency order.
Residents in the Alzheimer’s unit had been subjected to sexual abuse by other residents. One male resident had been seen in bed with a female resident. And the male resident had put his hand down the blouses of several residents as well as a staff member.
After the survey, Peace River officials voluntarily agreed not to take any new patients and promised to put an extensive plan in place to prevent abuse and to make sure it was properly reported if it occurred again.
But when state inspectors returned on Feb. 12, they determined the nursing home had “utterly failed to adhere to the remedial measures.”
The emergency order to prevent new residents from entering the facility was issued on Feb. 15.
Among other issues, the inspectors observed a male resident wandering in and out of rooms occupied by female residents. They also discovered the male resident who had been involved in the previous sexual abuse incidents was not being closely monitored as the facility had promised.
The inspectors found a number of other deficiencies, including the failure to properly train staff to prevent abuse and the failure to conduct psychological testing on residents who had been subjected to abuse.