Healthcare Compliance Perspective – Squatting:
The Compliance Officer should evaluate the healthcare provider’s security system with the Compliance Committee to determine areas of vulnerability that threaten the safety and security of the residents. A plan of correction should be developed and implemented that will prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to the building, the residents’ rooms and their personal possessions. Staff should receive education about the plan of correction and training on being alert to possible unauthorized interlopers. An audit should be developed and implemented for monthly surveys of the provider’s unoccupied rooms to ensure they are not being used inappropriately.
A 29-year-old Kentucky man who has been “squatting” inside an empty room in a nursing home and allegedly stealing items from the residents has been jailed. He
has been charged on two counts of second-degree burglary, theft of over $10,000, identity theft, abuse and neglect of an adult, exploitation of an adult and theft of services.
Staff discovered the seemingly intoxicated man about 3 a.m. in the morning and called 911. The police came and found him inside one of the unoccupied rooms at the nursing home. It was not known how the man was able to get into the facility, nor how he was able to remain there for so long without being discovered.
Staff and the police determined that the man had accessed at least three rooms-two of them occupied by residents who were bedridden. When he was found he was wearing pajamas belonging to one of the residents. The man had hidden his personal items in the resident’s clothes hamper along with some electronic items he allegedly had stolen from another resident’s room.
Based on the investigation, the police and nursing home staff determined that the man had spent a long time in the nursing home. He used the shower, slept and watched television in an empty room undetected.
He is being held in the county’s Detention Center until his preliminary hearing.
