Compliance Perspective:
A Compliance Officer’s primary role is to be available to co-workers, Independent contractors, volunteers, vendors, residents/patients and families. There are countless ways to do so including, but not limited to, posters, walking around, and following-up on family grievances.
A 27-year-old man admitted to a New York supportive living facility operated by the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) on November 30, was discovered in his room after being dead for 39 days. After the man’s family did not hear from him for four days, they tried to visit him in the facility on December 9; but, they were told that the man had packed his belongings and left five days before. The family reported the man missing to the police and supposedly a police officer had checked and was told that the man had checked out of the facility on December 2.
The supportive facility was supposed to be the last stop on the man’s journey to recovering from his drug addiction. He had first gone through a detox program at an addiction recovery center, then he was in a halfway house until he was accepted into the supportive living facility.
His family and friends were concerned when they were told he was no longer at the facility and they began to search and ask people if they had seen him. They thought that maybe he had relapsed or had overdosed and died. They checked the hospitals, morgues and local drug hangouts. They even went to a Burger King the man was known to frequent, but no one had seen him.
Then, on January 11, 39 days after the family had last talked with the missing man, a pest control worker entered what had been the man’s room at the supportive living facility and found his badly decomposed body on the bed. The man had been at the facility the whole time.
The medical examiner told the family that the man had apparently died from a cardiac arrhythmia on December 3. The only drugs found in the man were prescription drugs.
The OASAS told reporters that it was “cooperating fully” with the investigation and that the facility has been monitored with unannounced site visits ever since they were notified of the man’s death.
The family says a staff member told them the man angrily left a meeting where they were going over rules that included things he did not like. The man’s family is questioning why they were told the man had taken his belongings and left when that was not true. His body was found in his assigned room along with his personal belongings. The spokesman for the facility refused to comment on the situation citing patient confidentiality laws.
The case is now being investigated by the Office of the Inspector General because the facility continued to be reimbursed by the state for almost two months after the man died.
