Healthcare Compliance Perspective – Multiple Felonies:
The Compliance Officer should be aware of and investigate warnings/reports from senior staff regarding unsafe issues that are being made to the administrator and owner. These issues 
should be brought to the Compliance Committee for further evaluation and recommendations. The Compliance Officer should follow-up with senior staff to ensure that there is no retaliation occurring from management or the owners, and that recommendations by the Compliance Committee are being implemented.
In October 2014, ownership and management of the problem-filled rehabilitation and nursing facility in upstate New York, was taken over by a new owner and his high-level manager. Instead of working to improve the status of the facility to provide better care of the residents, this new management ignored the warnings and citations from the state’s Department of Health surveys. The pair’s actions further endangered the residents to the point that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) designated the center a Special Focus Facility. “CMS may terminate a nursing home’s participation in Medicare and Medicaid. Before that, a home may find its way on a list of what are known as Special Focus Facilities. It is a list of nursing homes that (a) have had a history of serious quality issues and (b) are included in a special program to stimulate improvements in their quality of care.” https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-a-special-focus-facility-197917
The accused owner and manager reduced staffing from 298 employees to 225, cut payroll, cut necessary services and supplies and ignored warnings from senior staff about unsafe conditions that placed some residents in immediate jeopardy.Multiple Felonies.
There have been numerous internally reported incidents in the facility that support and illustrate the DOH’s claims of abuse, mistreatment and neglect toward the residents. There were also communications found from managing and nursing staff that indicated because of the “pay cuts and onerous double-shift requirements imposed by the defendants,” they could not get enough people to work the shifts.
The two accused men have been arraigned and their next date in court is scheduled for July 18. Each one was charged with “three counts of first-degree endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person, and two counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of an incompetent or physically disabled person.
Prior to being sold to the felony-charged owner and manager for $18.5 million in 2014, the facility was owned and operated by the county where it is located.
Since January 2017, the large, 174-bed nursing home has been under new management and has a new name. The new owner is not involved with the current charges.
