New Director Nurses Home Back To Health Care Center Answers Violations With Clean Reports From The State

On cold winter nights, the Lilac City Care Center’s television blares as elderly residents gather around for Monday night football.

A few sip beer (with doctors’ permission, of course).

On warmer Saturdays, nursing home residents pile in a van and go fishing. And now and then, those who miss their kitchens bake batches of chocolate-chip cookies.

Could this be the place state inspectors threatened to shut down three years ago after finding residents alone in dark rooms, facing the wall?

The place where no one paid attention when residents lost weight or got bedsores or couldn’t get food to their mouths? That racked up 56 pages of violations and $7,000 in fines?

Even more surprising, the North Side center got perfect scores in two of its last three state inspections - an almost unheard-of feat.

Employees give much of the credit for the transformation to a young, perpetually optimistic man who knew little about nursing homes before entering the picture.

Steve Anderson, then 29, became Lilac’s new director in November 1991 - months after inspectors declared the center unfit to accept new residents.

He was tempted to leave the minute he arrived.

One of his first moves was to call his wife back in Seattle and tell her not to quit her job there - just in case.

“After I got through the initial shock and horror, I decided it was sink or swim,” said Anderson, who left a medical marketing job to return to Spokane, his hometown.

Among the clutter on his new desk was a list of problems documented by inspectors:

A blind, nearly deaf woman who fished for food on her plate with her fingers, complaining she couldn’t find it and getting little help.

Visitors who said they often find a relative wearing only a slip or slippers that don’t match.

Bedsores that nearly a quarter of patients got after coming to the nursing home.

Food that wasn’t served hot, and milk that wasn’t served cold.

Little physical rehabilitation.

The list was long and daunting, and the challenge was intimidating.

Anderson, a Whitworth College graduate, estimates more than 100 employees came and went on his 58-position staff during the first year. Some lasted just weeks.

Morale was rock-bottom, and many refused to fill in when the center was shortstaffed.

“We’ve had very few people who weathered the storm,” said Barbara Rogge, a nursing director who replaced someone who didn’t.

Rogge worked alongside her new nurses, showing them how to care for the 48 residents and turn them to avoid bedsores. She helped develop new care plans.

Stronger recreation and rehabilitation programs were put in place.

Even housekeeping and maintenance workers helped with the overhaul, ordering new, flowered bedsheets to replace the stark white ones and cleaning grime from smelly bathrooms.

“Steve was real strict on everything looking good, on the residents looking good and in clean clothes,” said Bob Ames, environmental services manager.

Anderson also helped hang sheetrock and plant flowers outside the center at 1707 E. Rowan. As a finishing touch, he ordered a log for the gas fireplace that long sat empty in a gathering room.

“In the first year, it was a real turnaround,” said Ames.

Office Manager Darlene Davey saw the nursing home she vowed she’d never take her parents to transformed into a place she’s proud of.

Workers who once dreaded the three-day, unannounced state inspections stopped worrying.

“I was never in one so relaxed,” said Ames, recalling a recent inspection. “There was nothing for them to see.”

The turnaround was impressive, said Michael Jessup, who manages nursing home inspections in the Spokane office of the Department of Social and Health Services.

“We’re tough,” Jessup said. “They do deserve a lot of credit.”

It’s extremely rare for a nursing home to get two deficiency-free inspections, he said. Getting even one isn’t easy.

Since July 1994, only four other Eastern Washington nursing homes have had a perfect score on the inspections for approval of Medicaid/Medicare funding, Jessup said.

They are Washington Odd Fellows and Park Manor in Walla Walla, Colonial Vista in Wenatchee, and Newport Long Term Care Unit.

At Lilac City, no one jokes anymore about how long Anderson will last. His wife, Lisa, has joined him in Spokane. He has settled in.

“I didn’t think I could do it within the first few weeks,” he said. “I am so proud of how far we have come.”