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who discovered the open carton of milk with a straw in it alerted a staff member, who then discovered three more outdated cartons of spoiled milk in the center’s kitchen and two in the dining room.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!

This is just sick.

Investigators are looking into how a man staying at a DeLand nursing home developed maggots in his eye.

The man, whose name is not being released, also is suffering from bedsores, an infected breathing tube and a partially inserted catheter, police said.

“Neglect happens constantly. This style of suspected neglect is rare,” DeLand police Deputy Chief Randel Henderson said. “When you have an infestation like this and you have an incubation of insects, it’s certainly odd.”

Ewe.

Police interviewed hospital staff this week and continued to interview employees at the nursing home, University Center West, on Friday. But they were waiting to hear whether the Attorney General’s Office would be taking over the case.

The Attorney General’s Office on Friday would not confirm or deny its involvement because of the ongoing investigation.

Officials at University Center West did not return calls for comment.

Silence is often an admission of guilt.

Henderson said he did not know and could not release what infirmities the man suffered from before the incident, but a police report indicates he is a patient with hospice, which covers care for the terminally ill.

According to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, the nursing home received three stars out of five overall in its last inspection in August and two stars for quality of care. It received one star for nutrition and hydration but five stars, the best rating, for restraints and abuse, according to the agency’s Web site.

A hospice to boot! Let’s hope much of this report turns out to be untrue. I cannot, CANNOT imagine ANY nursing home where maggots are allowed to live on residents.

Reactions from that NYT article about nursing home investments vs. quality care:

First:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – Concerned that the trend toward private equity ownership of nursing homes is diverting taxpayer money to enriching top executives and buyout firms at the expense of quality care, the nation’s largest healthcare workers union is calling on Congress to take action to improve the quality of care and hold private equity firms accountable for their ownership of nursing homes.

Citing a recent New York Times investigation, the experience of nursing home caregivers, and concern over the pending buyout by the Carlyle Group of the nation’s largest nursing home provider, HCR Manor Care, SEIU sent letters Friday to the Chairmen of the House Committees on Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Oversight and Government Reform, and to the
Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Then this:

To US Senators want to know if nursing home abuse and neglect are more prevalent in facilities owned by private Wall Street equity firms, and they are asking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to find out. Their requests come on the heels of a New York Times investigation that found that the quality of care at nursing homes dropped sharply after they were acquired by private investment concerns.

Senators Hilary Clinton (D-NY) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) based their requests on the report in the New York Times that said drastic cost cutting measures imposed on nursing homes once they were purchased by private equity firms made nursing home neglect and abuse far more likely. Recently, private investment firms have looked to nursing homes as a possible route to easy money. These firms buy facilities, drastically reduce their costs, then turn around and sell them at huge profits.

Good to see some action coming from the NYT article. The NYT isn’t always accurate with it’s reporting; and they are known to have an agenda that isn’t always friendly towards the business community. In this case though, we KNOW through our own work and experiences that these nursing homes are just bad places. WE know of the staff cutbacks, the supply shortages and neglect forced upon the residents. I hope something good comes of this. Our elderly deserve so much better.

More about nursing homes/assisted living facilities hiring and then firing or HIDING staff who have criminal backgrounds.

NEW PORT RICHEY - A man applied for a job at a home for the elderly. He had pleaded no contest to a violent felony; he was hired nonetheless. One morning last week, police say, he lunged at an 78-year-old Alzheimer’s patient and punched him in the face.

The man went to jail, but he was not the only person with a criminal record on the New Port Inn’s payroll. At least two other caregivers also had records. And before state investigators arrived Tuesday to survey the facility, those caregivers were swept out of view.

Not good. I suspect we will be reading more about this in the coming weeks. (I hope so anyway).

The tales found in the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Service’s disciplinary files can be savage, sad and stomach-turning. But they are intended to serve an essential purpose: protecting Texas grandparents, disabled children and the terminally ill from abusive or dishonest nurse aides and other caregivers.

But dangerous blind spots plague the system that oversees them, a Star-Telegram examination has found. Across the state, caregivers facing discipline for sexual misconduct, theft, abuse — and a fatal case of neglect — were all able to find and hold new jobs.

Consider this: The department has banned about 680 people — for life — from working at any of the facilities it regulates. Yet every two years, the department renews the certifications of some of those same workers as nurse aides. One San Antonio aide, blacklisted for stealing an elderly man’s identity in 2005, has a new certification good through 2009. A Lubbock aide banned for swindling an elderly woman out of more than $100,000 works for a healthcare staffing company and insists she’s not caring for patients — “We do billing,” she said. Another, banned for neglect, was fired from a Plano nursing home only after the Star-Telegram questioned her status in August.

Just how do those workers keep getting recertified? All the state requires for renewal is evidence that an aide is still working.

So if a blacklisted aide continues to hold a job and sends that evidence to the state, no one checks to see whether they should be working before issuing the renewal.

If these allegations, as they stand now, are true, I hope these aides get the full book of punishments thrown at them.

GIRARD — Nurse’s aides, described as bullies in a state investigator’s report, allegedly spent months tormenting nursing-home residents with Alzheimer’s disease and other mental impairments.

The incidents at Pleasant Hill Village, described in a Feb. 21 report by investigators from the Illinois Department of Public Health, have resulted in a $25,000 fine, Public Health spokeswoman Kimberly Parker said Tuesday. The nursing home is challenging the fine.

Girard police also are investigating the accusations and will forward information in a few months to the Macoupin County state’s attorney for possible criminal charges, Girard police Sgt. Harold Gist said.

Police are focusing on the actions of two nurse’s aides, both of whom have been fired. A third aide also has been fired, apparently because she is believed to have witnessed the incidents but didn’t immediately report the conduct to her supervisors.

What are the allegations?

Among allegations outlined by the state report:

# Nurse’s aides held an alarm next to a resident’s ear to discourage her from getting up when they didn’t want her to get up.

# Aides poked a resident with a safety pin because the resident would constantly try to get out of her wheelchair to go to the bathroom or to bed. To avoid that treatment, the resident started to avoid activities and began to stay in bed all day.

# One of the aides grabbed a resident’s injured arm and asked “Does this hurt?” and the resident responded, “Don’t do that.”

# Aides took personal belongings as a way of punishing one resident.

# Aides made residents take showers against their will.

# Aides restrained one man by holding his arms behind his back and bending back his fingers.

Sickening, if true.

Several months ago we wrote many posts here about the case of Mabel Taylor, the woman with Alzheimer’s Disease, who eloped from her nursing home and was found dead outside. The owner of the home, Martha F. Bell, was recently convicted of covering up the death of Mrs. Taylor. Now the nurse who was on duty that fateful night has also been convicted.

As the son of two doctors who practiced medicine from home offices and treated sick people around the clock, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman said he knows what constitutes good patient care.

“That’s not what happened here,” the judge told former nursing home supervisor Kathryn Galati yesterday before sentencing her to five years of probation for her role in a failed plan to cover up how a former resident died in 2001.

Judge Cashman also barred Ms. Galati, a registered nurse, from working in health care during that time. Ms. Galati, 61, of the North Side, in March pleaded guilty to perjury, false swearing, conspiracy and tampering with evidence.

Ms. Galati was the supervisor at the defunct Ronald Reagan Atrium I Nursing, Research and Rehabilitation Center in Robinson when resident Mabel Taylor died on Oct. 26, 2001. Mrs. Taylor, 88, who had Alzheimer’s disease, was trapped overnight in an outdoor courtyard in 40-degree weather.

Investigators accused Ms. Galati of conspiring with former Atrium administrator Martha F. Bell to deceive Mrs. Taylor’s family by directing employees to drag the victim’s body inside, wash and place her in bed and claim she’d died peacefully in her sleep.

Mrs. Taylor’s daughter, Jane Baczewski of Hopewell, testified yesterday of her horror after discovering the “elaborate scheme to conceal” the truth.

“I will live with that picture of my dear mother being dragged on that pavement for the rest of my life,” she said, her voice cracking.

Ms. Galati did not speak yesterday. Her attorney, Leslie Perlow, said she is “not the greatest communicator,” but is remorseful and knows “what she did was wrong.”

A sentence of probation seems a little insufficient to me in this case. A woman died due to the lack of good supervision this nurse failed to provide; and the actions after are just horrible. But I am not a judge or jury in this case.

Previous Posts about this case

The US Supreme Court has made a finding on the case of the CNA who lost her license for allegedly abusing a resident. There was never any actual evidence and the state of Washington took her CNA credentials away anyway.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a Washington state Supreme Court ruling that the state didn’t have enough proof to suspend a woman’s nursing assistant license for the alleged abuse of an Alzheimer’s patient in 2001.

The Supreme Court exonerated Alice Ongom without comment.

In December 2006, the state Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that for professional disciplinary hearings, due process requires “clear, cogent and convincing proof.”

Alice Ongom was a nursing assistant at the Woodmark Retirement Home in Federal Way, Wash. She was accused of throwing a cup or dish at a resident, as well as slapping her on the hands several times and kicking her.

Witnesses gave conflicting statements concerning whether Ongom assaulted the woman, but the Department of Health investigation found that even though there was not “clear and convincing evidence,” a preponderance of evidence existed, as required by the Washington Administrative Code. Ongom’s license was suspended for two years.

The Washington Supreme Court said that section of the code was invalid and that the higher burden of proof must be used in these cases.

I suspect that something bad did happen here- maybe not outright abuse, but something close to it. Whatever it was, it was enough to get the attention of a lot of people in and near that dining room. This case proves to us how important it is to report things we hear and see; to report things our residents tell us; to observe them and their behaviors after such events…and, let this be a lesson for management- a thorough investigation is always very very important. WE DON’T WANT ABUSIVE aides working with us, or our residents. Even though the aide involved with this case appears to have been exonerated, I don’t trust it. None of us should.

WHAT would cause a CNA to do THIS??

HUNTSVILLE (AP) — A nursing home employee was jailed for allegedly using a cigarette lighter to set fire to an elderly patient’s bed over the weekend.

Huntsville Public Safety Director Rex Reynolds said Tina Louise Spencer, 31, was booked into the county jail Saturday on charges of first-degree arson and attempted murder. She was being held on $6,000 bond.

Spencer is accused of setting fire to the bed of Ann Hudson, 88, at Carlton Cove nursing home. The condition of Hudson, who is bedridden, was not immediately available, but Carlton Cove executive director Dan Shields said she sustained first- and second-degree burns.

I just cannot fathom ANY aide doing something like this. No way. There has to be more to this story then is being reported.

The case against the staff at the PA nursing home, who have been accused of covering up the death of Mabel Taylor, is getting hot.

A nursing home supervisor told other workers that the home’s administrator had directed them to clean the body of resident Mabel Taylor and tell her family she’d died in her sleep, a licensed practical nurse testified yesterday.

Licensed practical nurse Cynthia Osborn said that she and other workers moved Mrs. Taylor’s body inside and used a sheet to drag the body back to Mrs. Taylor’s room after finding her lifeless in an outdoor courtyard.

“I tried to wake her and shake her. She was gone,” said Ms. Osborn, who worked at the former Ronald Reagan Atrium I Nursing, Research and Rehabilitation Center in Robinson. “I went screaming down the hall [for help.]”

After workers lifted Mrs. Taylor’s body into bed, nursing supervisor Kathryn Galati left the room to telephone Atrium administrator Martha F. Bell, Ms. Osborn testified. Ms. Galati returned and told workers that Mrs. Bell had said to wipe off Mrs. Taylor’s body and “we’d take care of it in the morning.

“We were going to tell the family she’d died in her sleep,” Ms. Osborn said, adding that Ms. Galati said an incident report was not to be written. Ms. Osborn said she should have written nursing notes about Mrs. Taylor’s death, but Ms. Galati said she would handle it and allowed her to go home early because she was upset.

Ms. Osborn’s testimony came in the trial of Ms. Bell, 60, of West Mifflin, and Atrium’s parent corporation, the Alzheimer’s Disease Alliance of Western Pennsylvania, in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

Both are charged with neglect of a care-dependent person, involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment in the death of Mrs. Taylor, 88, who was trapped overnight in the locked courtyard at Atrium. Mrs. Bell also is charged with conspiring to cover up the circumstances of Mrs. Taylor’s death and theft of payroll funds.

Mrs. Bell’s attorney, John Elash, repeatedly questioned Ms. Osborn about her supervision of Mrs. Taylor’s unit of 29 residents, many of whom had Alzheimer’s or dementia, before Mrs. Taylor’s body was found.

Ms. Osborn, who was working alone on the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, conceded that she “glanced” into residents’ rooms but never actually saw Mrs. Taylor. She also acknowledged that she did not perform a thorough check of all residents and alarms that, when activated, rang when exterior doors were opened.

She said she did not have time for more thorough checks because other workers had called off and she was also trying to complete required monthly reports. She said she “took it for granted” that alarms had been activated because Ms. Galati worked on her unit on the previous shift and had reported no problems.

Ms. Osborn said she didn’t ask Ms. Galati for more help because other units had no workers to spare.

“I was there by myself, responsible for all those patients,” she said. “I did the best I could.”

What would YOU do if you were asked to cover up the death of a resident??