Nursing home under review
A Spokane nursing home with the worst record in the county for resident care got special attention from its parent company last year in the form of intensive training and increased scrutiny.
Extendicare Health Facilities Inc. poured resources into Franklin Hills Health and Rehabilitation Center in hopes of squelching the complaints that plagued the north Spokane facility.
New leaders took over the home, and state officials pointed to the efforts as a reason to allow the Milwaukee-based company to build another facility, which Extendicare representatives hope to open on Spokane’s South Hill in 2010.
More than six months later, Franklin Hills has shown “vast improvement,” said Mel Beal, Extendicare’s vice president for operations, and an April 11 inspection by the state Department of Health’s Residential Care Services supports that.
Now another Exendicare home, in Spokane Valley, will get the corporate touch, but the company says a poor state inspection in January and two recently filed lawsuits alleging negligent care and poor living conditions at the Gardens on University have nothing to do with it.
“Whether or not the Gardens was considered a poor performer … we’re going to do it anyway,” Beal said.
The work at Franklin Hills and the Gardens is part of a quality improvement plan in place for all Extendicare facilities in the region, Beal said. An independent contractor reviews processes at the facilities, looking at hiring practices and training procedures and assessing where changes should be made. Leadership at the Gardens is in the first stage of the process, Beal said, and they’ll decide what route to take.
“The Gardens implemented a very aggressive program to solicit concerns from family members, residents and staff members,” Beal said. “The local management team there has really embraced that.”
According to a suit filed in U.S District Court by Diane Deshong, the Gardens on University was so short-staffed when her mother, Dorothy Dupuis, stayed there in 2006 that she was left in her urine-soaked bed for long periods. Employees failed to assist Dupuis in her daily needs, which caused her to fall and break her hip, the suit alleges.
Another suit filed by Mark Holum, a registered nurse, points to inadequate staffing as the reason Holum was allegedly assaulted by a patient in late 2004. The suit alleges Holum was left alone with a patient while working at the home and suffered injuries when the man attacked him. The patient had a history of violence and should not have been admitted to the facility, according to the suit, let alone left by himself with an employee.
Such allegations are nothing new to Extendicare; newspaper archives and state records show a history of neglect suits and state-imposed fines at its regional facilities, including the LaCrosse Health and Rehabilitation Center in Coeur d’Alene, which was put on temporary probation in 2000 for the way it handled an 87-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s who allegedly attacked fellow patients in a locked ward. Extendicare also owns the Ivy Court nursing home in Coeur d’Alene and Cherrywood Place in Spokane.
From fall 2006 to September 2007, Franklin Hills paid $10,000 in fines and nearly lost its federal certification to receive Medicare and Medicaid funds after inspections found problems ranging from day-to-day treatment of patients to how they were discharged. During that same period, the Gardens was fined $4,000 after a state inspection ruled employees weren’t dispensing medication properly.
In January, the home was again hit with citations – none reached the level of fines – after inspectors found food served under or over temperature, residents not getting help with toiletry needs and staff who weren’t following procedures for moving residents around the building.
An investigation into a complaint about residents missing items found the nursing home tracked the reports and replaced missing money, so the state took no action.
A multiday inspection of the Gardens in January revealed deficiencies, including one that inspectors determined caused “actual harm” to a resident. Franklin Hills’ most recent assessment in April showed only a few problems, and none harmed patients, said Shirlee Steiner, regional administrator for DSHS Residential Care Services in Region 1, which serves 11 Eastern Washington counties.
“It was a good inspection,” Steiner said. “They have improved from the past.”
Extendicare’s history in Spokane includes operating the now-defunct Valleycrest nursing home, which inspectors repeatedly flagged for poor care and failing to protect residents. The center closed in fall 1996 after federal support was cut. It also once operated a South Side home called Southcrest that voluntarily closed in 1999, two years after it received its second state violation in as many years.
Exendicare’s plans for a 60,200-square-foot, one-story facility at 4515 S. Freya received the OK from the county for a conditional-use permit in March, but neighbors have appealed the decision, Beal said.