Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
The Compliance Officer should review with the Compliance Committee the facility’s policies and procedures regarding Residents’ Rights and the ability to come and go from the facility. The facility will complete an audit of all the residents to identify those who have orders to leave the facility unescorted. Identified residents will then be assessed for continued capacity to continue leaving the facility without escort. Staff should be educated about the importance of having residents sign-out and sign-in when coming and going to and from the facility.
Investigators are still working to determine the somewhat mysterious circumstances in the death of a Charlottesville nursing home resident who fell into a creek and later died. The resident was 65-years-old and a U.S. Army veteran. He was observed leaving the nursing home around noon last week.
The Charlottesville Fire Chief reported that someone called 911 about 4:47 p.m. and reported that a man had fallen from his wheelchair into the creek. The police along with fire and rescue crews went out about 5 p.m. in the middle of a severe thunderstorm to investigate the report and found the man a few minutes later in cardiac arrest. They attempted CPR but were unsuccessful.
The spokesman for the nursing home confirmed that the man was a resident in his facility and told investigators that a resident’s freedom to come and go from the facility depends upon the resident’s individual level of alertness and requires permission to do so from the resident’s physician. He also said that the staff was quite upset about the man’s death and expressed confidence that there was no negligence involved.
“Everyone has the right to come and go as they please, and this resident in particular had a history of signing himself out of the facility on a leave of absence without any incident,” reported the spokesman. “There was certainly nothing in the resident’s history or his diagnosis to indicate that the events of today would happen. It’s just one of those horrible situations that there’s no other way to describe other than tragedy,” the spokesman said. He also indicated that the facility will be doing an investigation into the incident to determine what happened and whether the facility or staff could have done anything to prevent it.
The medical examiner will perform an autopsy.
