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About that nursing home where maggots were found in a man’s eye:

DELAND — Before a World War II veteran came to the hospital with reports of maggots in his eye, the nursing home where he lived was ordered to correct a long list of problems that included serving residents spoiled milk and moldy bread.

“The milk was curdled and had a pungent odor,” an official from the state Agency for Health Administration wrote in a March 20 report of an inspection at the University Center West at 545 W. Euclid Ave

The inspector who discovered the open carton of milk with a straw in it alerted a staff member, who then discovered three more outdated cartons of spoiled milk in the center’s kitchen and two in the dining room. On the same day, officials found a loaf of wheat bread with a “green fuzzy substance” and “flying gnats” on a shelf near a bed, the report states.

On Nov. 7, Anthony Digiannurio, 82, a Purple Heart recipient, was taken to Florida Hospital DeLand at 3 a.m. from University Center West with respiratory problems. The hospital staff discovered the elderly man had maggots in one of his eyes, an infected breathing tube, a partly inserted catheter and bed sores on his left elbow, according to a DeLand police report.

This week, Sandi Copes, spokeswoman for the Florida Attorney General’s Office, confirmed her office is conducting a criminal investigation into the man’s care.

Uugh! So the reports were not sensational as some suggested. It makes me ill to know such places exist.

The facility has been under scrutiny for the past two years for a host of problems, according to a 77-page report by the Agency for Health Care Administration obtained by The Daytona Beach News-Journal in response to a public records request. The nursing home is owned by the nonprofit Hearthstone Senior Communities Inc., also known as AGE Institute of Florida Inc., based in St. Petersburg.

Inspectors found many certified nursing assistants had no training to deal with Alzheimer’s disease patients, and poor hygiene when treating patients with staph infections.

In February, an inspector reported the facility failed to investigate or report seven abuse and neglect allegations, including one by a resident who said staff members saw the resident vomit but did not clean off the resident on July 20, 2006.

“I slept in throw-up all night,” the resident told the inspector.

All the deficiencies noted in the report had been corrected as of April 2007, agency spokesman Fernando Senra said. Reached by telephone Wednesday, Jo-Ann Grasso, University Center West administrator, refused to comment or remain on the phone long enough to learn the subject of this story. Previously, she said the facility was cooperating with authorities and conducting its own investigation into the Digiannurio case.

The inspection report described residents unable to receive help when they couldn’t feed themselves. On Feb. 7, an inspector watched a resident in a wheelchair with stiff fingers who could not use utensils eventually stick the stiff fingers in the food and “suck (the) fingers for nutrition,” the inspector wrote. Unable to hold the glass of milk, the person had nothing to drink, the report said.

For two years this place was red flagged…and yet it’s still open, free to neglect residents. I think our inspection system works just fine; I think the fine system stinks and this bulloney about “working with the facility” to make improvements is just that: Bulloney. Close these places down for good. Send the management team to jail for a couple years too- and perhaps some of the nursing staff as well. There are never good excuses for MAGGOTS being in the eye of a resident. God only knows where else they’re living!