LAURINBURG — A Laurinburg nursing home is once again facing state inspectors.
Officials with the NC Department Health and Human Services Health Service Regulation spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday conducting audits at Willow Place Assisted Living Facility on Stone Wall Road following a new round of complaints.
“DHSR and the Scotland County Department of Social Services are onsite conducting a follow-up survey and complaint investigation. We cannot disclose any information regarding complaints as, by law, complaints are confidential,” Public Information Officer Kelly Haight said in an email to The Laurinburg Exchange’s inquiry.
Haight said investigations are ongoing and could not say when the results of the audit would be released.
An email sent to four representatives of DHHSR in March outlining complaints was forward to The Exchange. The email points out the recent complaint by the family of a resident alleging rape. The brother of the resident contacted police on March 24 to say that his sister had been raped by another resident. The alleged victim is a 52-year-old woman with mental deficiencies. An employee of the facility called the brother to let him know about the incident, the family said.
The email also mentions that another resident with cognitive issues went missing in February and was later located in New Jersey.
It also alleges that other safety issues for which the home was investigated in 2017 continue to be problems.
“Senior residents live in fear and are being threatened by young mental health patients/residents who currently reside at the facility,” the email states. “They are admitting residents with a primary diagnosis of mental health disorders (level II) and who fall below the recommended age for a senior home.”
The home was cited in June for failure to protect residents from violent and combative Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.
The home was cited twice in 2017 for improperly trained staff and for having inadequate numbers of staff on shifts. The email claims that staff continue to be ill trained.
“A resident recently passed away in the facility and was found by staff. Staff responded but failed to follow standard protocol for an ALF [assisted living facility] resident without a DNR [do not resuscitate] order. The staff at this facility are still not trained enough to understand how or when to render CPR or possess the aptitude needed to care for seniors,” the email said. “Staff continue to lack the proper training and certification and the administrator and operator continue to push untrained and unqualified people to classify them as ‘trained staff members.”
Another patient died in the home last year due to under-trained staff and improperly administered medications, according to a report from DHHSR in August.
The email also alleges that residents continue to be underfed and not fed proper diets for patients with special dietary needs. The complaint alleges that in one case residents were fed scrambled eggs and mixed vegetables for dinner and that staff members had taken it upon themselves to cook at home and bring it to for residents at times.
Lack of access to food and proper nutrition was a major issue for the home last year. The facility also ran out of food on several occasions according to DHHSR reports from June and August.
The email also contends that the administrator and operators are misappropriating patients’ money. The facility was reported for a similar issue in 2017. The home is required to refund money that is in patients’ expense accounts when a patient moves to another facility, but the investigation in August found that Willow Place did not.
“The administrator is misappropriating the residents’ money by only giving them $10 or $20 per month and claiming to pay their drug bills with the rest but will not show proof of payments nor their balance in the residence trust account,” the email stated.
The email is demands that the “facility be closed or placed in receivership, stripping the current operators of their ability to operate and the current administrators license should be revoked, immediately.”
The home is operated by Georgette Jones owner of Z&V Adult Care. Officials with the facility could not be reached for comment.
The home was cited for 16 infractions and issued a provisional license after state inspections in April and May of 2017 when reports were made to North Carolina Department of Health and Human Service Regulation by patients and their families. One of the charges was, failure to protect a resident from another violent, combative suffering from Alzheimer’s.
On Feb. 12, a patient with dementia wandered away from the home and was not located until mid March when he turned up in New Jersey.
Following the spring 2017 inspections, Willow Place was cited for having violated serious state codes concerning patient care and staffing during. The short staffing caused issues with patients’ personal care and safety because patients with dementia were not being kept in a separate hall or being properly monitored.
DHHSR conducted a second inspection in August to deal with additional complaints from patients and their families. Following that investigation, Willow Place was written up for an additional 18 violations some of which the home had been cited for in the first inspection.
The assessment determined that the home failed to follow state regulations for staffing after investigators sampled records for 10 days between June and July and found that “the facility failed to assure staffing met minimal requirements according to the census, for 36 of 45 shifts sampled,” according to the report.
Willow Place presented the state with a Plan of Protection in June and a second in August promising that staff would be given additional training to address the problems.
In December, the state reinstated the home’s license allowing it to once again accept new residents.
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