Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
Failure to investigate and prevent the continuing abuse of a facility’s residents involving previously reported or re-portable incidents may result in severe civil and criminal penalties including fines and the suspension of admissions.
After the Tennessee DOH completed their complaint and annual survey at a Kingston nursing home in March, the state health commissioner assessed Civil Monetary Penalties totaling $12,000 ($3,000 each for four violations) to the facility. The violations the surveyors found involved unacceptable conditions in these areas: administration, admissions, discharges, transfers, performance improvement and social work services.
One particularly concerning incident involved the unsafe discharge of a resident that put him in a place the state inspection report indicated, “was detrimental to his health, safety and welfare.” The place was a local hotel and the facility paid for the resident to stay three nights there. The hotel did have a free breakfast, but the facility made no other arrangements for the man to have access to food or money to pay for it. They also did not make sure the man would be able to obtain his medications. The facility implemented the discharge of the man for violating the facility’s smoking policy while the man was reportedly still in the process of appealing the involuntary discharge.
The state has appointed a “special monitor to review the facility’s operations.”
Historically, this is not the first time that the admissions at the facility have been suspended. In 2016, the facility was issued a “one-time state Civil Monetary Penalty of $5,001” for violations related to “administration, performance improvement, physician services, infection control, nursing services and residents’ rights.” Other 2016 documents indicate that the facility was lacking in preventing abuse of its residents and failed to correctly report and investigate allegations of abuse.
Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare Tool gives the facility only one of five possible stars. It also notes that in 2016 the facility was fined over $400,000 by federal authorities.
The nursing home is entitled to have a hearing before the Board of Licensing for Health Care Facilities or an administrative judge.
