A disgusting trail of alleged elderly patient neglect and abuse finally caught up with a Texas nursing home operator, which will pay $5 million to settle a whistleblower case. (We say "alleged" because the deal does not require the operators, Health Services Management Inc. [HSM] of Murfreesboro, Tenn., to admit guilt.)
Starting in 2013 whistleblower Susan Anthony, former director of marketing for Huntsville Health Care Center in Huntsville, Texas, said she filed numerous grievance reports to Hunstville's parent company, HSM, of "patient abuse and neglect, including services not performed, inadequate care, physical and verbal abuse, and denial of services, such as food and water provision, on a daily basis," according to the complaint filed in U.S. district court for Southern Texas. Anthony also claimed to have witnessed "patient neglect that resulted in death or serious bodily injury."
For example, Anthony said she came to work one day to find a patient's family had discovered "rounds not being made every 2 hrs. Pt. bed was soaked with urine... wet thru to the mattress." The patient had to get out of bed without adequate assistance, Anthony reported, causing her to fall and suffer a head injury requiring "six to eight staples."
A Huntsville nurse in that case "admonished Ms. Anthony," per the complaint, "for admitting the patient in the first place 'knowing how involved the parents were going to be' and that 'you had to know this family was going to cause us a lot of headaches." (Ominously, Anthony reported that Huntsville took special care to ask the caregivers for prospective patients "how involved the patient's family would be. Ms. Anthony was told they did not want to accept patients with 'involved families.'")
Not only were her compliants not addressed, Anthony claimed -- some of her reports "had been removed for the facility's grievance binder before a state survey," apparently in order to hide them from surveyors from the Texas Department of Aging and Disabled Services (DADS). When she confronted center director Robert Siekert, Anthony said, he told her, "we don't put in explicit details that are going to get, uh, the building nailed. You understand what I'm saying?"
Among the other gruesome detials from the complaint:
During the time period of this complaint, a respiratory specialist was arrested while at the nursing facility for utilizing crack cocaine... Robert Siekert stated that drug screening is "too expensive" and that the center's budget does not provide for it...
In addition, one nurse stated that a staff member was attempting to "tie down [Patient 7] and restain" because she did not want to "babysit" him all night... another patient, Patient 8, was called "a dirty f------ n-----"...
In some instances, patients were not receiving water. For example, Ms. Anthony believes that Patient 12, a ventilator/tracheostomy and PRN dialysis patient covered by Medicare Part A, missed tube feedings and was deprived of water. Ms Anthony overheard a nurse talking about how this patient had not urinated for five days. Shortly thereafter, on or around May 22, 2015, Patient 12 was transferred to Huntsville Memorial Hospital where she was diagnosed with a severe urinary tract infection and sepsis...
Patient 21, a minimally responsive patient, died while being transported to a hospital, after her mother found her unbathed, visibly dirty, and with bugs crawling on her.
Yikes.