Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
A licensed healthcare professional is responsible, not only for her own actions, but also for the actions of others acting under the healthcare professional’s license.
Last September, a 45-year-old woman was found dead in a Speedway nursing home, and it was evident due to the presence of insects on her body that she had been deceased for some time. The facility was closed about two months later.
An investigation by the Indiana Attorney General’s office revealed that the facility had been operating under the Health Facility Administrator’s (HFA) license of the former administrator for the facility. The former administrator stopped working at the facility in early 2015, but she allowed her license to continue to be used in order for the facility to remain open. The facility’s owner did not employ another administrator after the previous administrator whose license was being used left the facility’s employ.
When the facility was closed, there were 30 residents that the police relocated to other facilities.
The former administrator has been accused by prosecutors of fraud and failure to ensure that the residents of the facility were receiving proper care, and complaints of misuse of a license were made to the Health Facility Administration. A month earlier, the State Department of Health inspected the facility and found the facility in deplorable condition with multiple bugs crawling on the bathroom counter/sink, the entry rug, near the ceiling and above the facility’s entry door.
A hearing regarding the woman’s license has been set for March 27, 2018.
