The nursing dwelling in Sussex County that grabbed nationwide headlines when police found greater than a dozen our bodies saved in a makeshift morgue in 2020 hasn’t reformed its methods.
Fairly the opposite: It has continued to horrify inspectors with recent findings of widespread dysfunctionality, abuse and neglect – from ignoring a resident in ache after his catheter received caught in his motorized wheelchair, as he begged for assist for 40 minutes, to failing to resuscitate a person in cardiac arrest, leaving him for lifeless.
So rely us with Sen. Joe Vitale, chairman of the Well being Committee, and Rep. Josh Gottheimer, whose district contains this infamous place: Time to close it down instantly. “There’s no coming again,” as Vitale advised Ted Sherman of NJ Advance Media final week: “Discover one other place for residents and yank their license.”
Sure, will probably be a problem to relocate the greater than 450 individuals who name this their dwelling, however what selection do we’ve got? For the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Middle, which has since modified its identify to the Woodland Behavioral and Nursing Middle, it’s ten strikes you’re out.
The place stays underneath the identical possession as in 2020; together with Louis Schwartz, a former vp with Skyline Healthcare – whose father was charged final month in a multi-million greenback federal tax fraud scheme in reference to Skyline, a failed nursing dwelling chain that after sought to buy the Andover facility.
And for this facility, one of many state’s largest nursing properties, the document speaks for itself: It noticed the worst covid outbreak in 2020, when the 17 our bodies had been discovered, and the worst throughout the Omicron surge. To this present day, it ranks among the many worst in optimistic instances, with a workers vaccination price far under the common in New Jersey nursing properties.
Even after it received hit with greater than $200,000 in fines and penalties by the feds in April 2020 for shoddy affected person care and an infection management practices, inspectors say it failed to make sure unvaxed staffers get repeatedly examined.
Residents are packed three to a room in a unclean area reeking of urine and feces, an advocate advised NJ Advance Media. The place typically operates with solely half the workers mandated by the state, inspectors say. Final month, it had the dignity of being featured on the state comptroller’s listing of New Jersey’s 15 worst nursing properties.
And this month, state inspectors uncovered solely extra disturbing info: Staffers typically get assigned twice as many individuals as they need to be, they curse out residents, and so they as soon as left a affected person dirty in feces for ten hours in a single day regardless of a bedsore liable to an infection – an incident by no means reported to the higher-ups, for which no one confronted any penalties.
At the least 18 members of New Jersey’s Nationwide Guard lately needed to be despatched out to guard these folks. And even earlier than covid, the place had a one-star ranking of “a lot under common.” A girl with dementia as soon as wandered out by means of two damaged doorways and was present in sub-zero climate, shedding her nails and swaths of pores and skin to extreme frostbite. Employees heard the door alarm however ignored it, an inspector discovered.
The feds have now given Woodland till March third to form up or get shut it down. However given all of this, why does it even deserve that closing probability?
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