Since the beginning of this year, Gracedale nursing home has done its best to establish a very positive social media presence. It has highlighted Valentine Day, Mardi Gras, its executive chef, volunteers, a food truck festival, its employees and tuition assistance program and even its very own prom night. Without question, there are good things to say about the home and the people who work there. NorCo Exec Tara Zrinski has said she plans to unveil her long-range plans for the facility at the next Human Services Committee. The fact remains, however, that it still has issues. The home has been the subject of eight visits from the state DOH this year. On two of these inspections, Gracedale was cited for deficiencies.
The most recent published survey (they appear online 41 days after the event) was on May 1. The state DOH was there for four reasons: a Medicare and Medicaid Recertification; state licensing; civil rights compliance, and one complaint. Unfortunately, several deficiencies were found. (You can read them yourself).
Two residents were victims of Chemical Restraints. - Many nursing home residents suffer from dementia. Others may need antianxiety medication at times. But when it is prescribed, it must stop after 14 days unless the resident is re-evaluated by a physician. Two residents were being given these medications beyond the 14-day limit.
The home failed to implement doctor's orders for four residents. - These include a failure to take blood stool samples, failure to notify physician of dropping blood sugar as requested; administering blood pressure medication despite physician order that it be skipped if resident's heartbeat is too low; and failure to follow a doctor's order to provide a resident with a certain kind of boot that prevents bed sores.
Inaccurate assessments - In at least two instances, nursing staff failed properly to document a resident's condition. In one case, nurses inaccurately reported that a resident had no falls when notes reflect he did. In another, a nurse incorrectly reported that a resident was receiving dialysis.
Failure to provide minimum required nursing care. - Gracedale has been cited repeatedly over its failure to meet the state minimum nursing care standard, including earlier this year. It blew it again over one of 22 das reviewed.
Zrinski has previously stated on several occasions that Administrator Michelle Morton is doing a good job. The facts tell a different story.
Will this negatively impact Gracedale's effort to have its provisional license recertified to regular? Online, the home is still listed as having only a provisional, but as previously stated, there is a 41-day lag between real time and what appears online.
28 comments:
Wow! Hope the staff responsible for these errors were fired. If not, until there are consequences for these blatant errors they will continue to occur. Are family members made aware when errors occur? If so, hopefully they demand the staff be fired. Or do these victims have no one to speak for them? Then hopefully doctors or the social workers seport known errors to higher management that lead to the firing of the staff responsible. One wonders how many more errors there are that weren't a part of the patient files reviewed. Unbelievable!
Nursing homes are no longer a core function of county government. Currently, 56/67 counties in the Commonwealth neither own nor operate one. Rather than bring back competent outside management, Tara has chosen to double down on failure.
Why is TZ waiting for a meeting to announce her world saving plan? All talk and no walk.
Hiring more administrators at six-figure salaries will solve all the problems. The best plan is to spend more good money after bad. Zrinski is a genius. (Poster's Note: ChatGPT did not assist with this post.)
And planning to have two new 6-figure salaried administrative positions will improve these patient care deficiencies how?
Time to sell government fails again.
That saying “Dodged a bullet” certainly applies to these situations. What is clear is that no one is monitoring anything there. Orders are apparently just passed through month to month with no one reviewing them for accuracy. Probably Michelle Morton will just say that “We are working on a plan of correction “ and expect everyone to nod and say “Sure”. These deficiencies also bring to light that no one can submit an accurate Minimum Data Set and still cannot staff the facility no matter how many agency staff are brought on board. I wonder what Ms. Keegan will have to say about this since she consistently blames staff for just calling in the Department of Health to “make things look bad”. I applaud those staff members who are still brave enough to look out for the residents at Gracedale.
My father was there the last 5 weeks of his life and he loved it there. He said the staff was the best!
Time to close Gracedale before someone is killed and the county and taxpayers are sued for millions. Get out of the hospital business unless its a jail.
Understood Sal but what if staff didn’t follow orders for your Dad as they apparently didn’t do for the other residents noted in these citations and something negative occurred? Exactly!
You realize that Gracedale is just God’s waiting room in Pennsylvania, not Florida. People die there frequently, which is why Lamont built the morgue in view of the residents so they can be reminded that their journey is coming to an end.
How can you be a "victims of Chemical Restraints"? I'll put those restraints on voluntarily.
Most of this carry-over from the McClure regime is going to take time to fix because of the financial crunch he left the County. Unfortunately there is no excuse for some of these infractions and someone should be held accountable. McClure should not be rewarded by employing him in the Solicitors office. The County doesn't owe him anything.
Well that's the final word. The place must be great. Let's spend more money on it. Didn't your Dad deserve Country Meadows?
It may be worth noting that in the now posted plan of correction it was discovered that the nurse did not know what the “more than and less than” symbols meant. Wow - scary. Apparently also the order to obtain the stool sample for blood was put in as a lab order rather than an order for the nursing staff. OMG.
Well, this one personal story negates everything!
56 counties got it wrong. Taking care of people who paid their taxes should be a core county function
The plan of correction for staffing began by stating that the facility was fully staffed but staff then “called out”. The problem- no one apparently knew to or attempted to fill the voids by calling in other staff or asking existing staff to perhaps stay longer past their shift. Hmm. Can’t make this stuff up.
Michelle Morton is a great mascot but a lousy administrator. Clean house!
Guess the taxpayer paid daycare didn't do it! Close it down and give our money back!
Tara could care LESS about Gracedale and Gracedale employees !!!!!.... the union reps were supposed to have a meeting with Tara about two weeks ago about Michelle morton bringing 80% agency nursing workers in and paying them more then Gracedale employees by 10$ a hr and do bare minimum work and cause most of the problems they are facing .They also wanted to address other things to her that is being swept under to rug .she canceled last minute,not till this day has reached out to reschedule then posts pictures of all these other events she attends SLAP IN THE FACE !!!.You would think Gracedale should be top priority and its NOT!!! And that says alot about her caring about Gracedale staff and its resistants .Lamont is totally responsible for the failure of Gracedale today. He FORCED the shot that might one day kill you and then they lost a ton of excellent dedicated workers .Now the place is a point away from lossing there licence.Obviously administration is not doing there job..The council needs to get to bottom of this like yesterday!!!!
She has integrity and is transparent with everything yet everyone rips her to shreds. She's trying to save the facility and taking all the hits that don't belong to her
Maybe the place really does need an exorcism.
It’s a Provisional II license, This is terrible! Tara has no clue.
Agency nurses have made more money than staff for years. Nothing new. But im certain most issues are related to them as they come without knowledge of the facility and policies and procedures. I'll say it again . Cut census and build in house staff. Only way to save this home. And you cant blame an administrator only for facility issues.
Tara is a motor mouth. Someone needs to turn it off. She just spews crap all the time and delivers nothing. Sell Gracedale already and save the taxpayers money. She’s a joke. Fruit loops.
One, just once, I'd like one of the "sell Gracedale" advocates to identify themselves.
A county nursing home was never a core function of county government, but neither is community development, economic development, parks and a myriad of other functions that county government now performs.
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