Valley Nursing Home May Face Shutdown Inspectors Report Finding Numerous Deficiencies At Valleycrest
A Spokane Valley nursing home has less than a week to shape up or shut down after a recent state inspection turned up more serious problems.
Nearly 100 elderly residents will be moved to other nursing homes if Valleycrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, 12715 E. Mission, doesn’t fix problems threatening patients’ health and safety by next Monday.
Inspectors again found numerous deficiencies, including a worker who punished a diabetic patient by withholding insulin, said Edith Coleman, who manages inspections for the state Department of Social and Health Services.
“When that happens, that’s being abusive to the resident,” Coleman said Monday. “It’s very dangerous.”
Such cases weren’t investigated in-house, even when Valleycrest administrators knew about them, according to Coleman.
“When you have an administrator who knows of things going on that could be abuse or neglect, and she isn’t investigating it, that is a serious situation,” Coleman said.
Gail Brown, Valleycrest administrator, referred questions to a company spokesman in Milwaukee.
Spokesman Mike Mervis issued a statement Monday saying the nursing home has “ongoing operational problems,” and disagreements with Washington state regulators.
Valleycrest’s parent company, Unicare, has hired a health-care consulting firm based in Madison, Wis., to run the nursing home, Mervis said.
Mervis said he can’t predict Valleycrest’s chances of winning state approval. “I think they’d be good, but I’ve said that before,” he said. “I don’t have the foggiest.”
The nursing home has been fined seven times in the past four years for deficiencies discovered by state inspectors. Mervis said his company disagrees with a recent finding that a woman in Valleycrest was pleading for food and going hungry.
But a review of the case showed that’s exactly what happened, Coleman said. “The real issue was she was asking for something and no one was giving it to her. No one was listening to her.”
The most recent inspection report, covering April 22 through May 2, included these criticisms:
A man’s family and doctor weren’t notified when he developed an open wound.
Workers said they didn’t know how a patient’s legs became bruised, yet no one investigated the problem.
A patient who complained of being lonely and sad wasn’t included in group activities.
Another resident who complained of feeling “like an abandoned child” didn’t get enough personal contact.
A patient spent most of the time alone in a dark room with the drapes drawn and the door closed. Workers didn’t follow a plan for more socialization.
Patients with urinary tract infections didn’t receive proper care.
Unicare owns 183 care facilities in 13 states, including three others in Spokane.
, DataTimes