Best and worst nursing homes around Kansas City: List reveals those cited for abuse
Seven nursing homes and rehab centers in the Kansas City area have been cited for abuse or neglect, according to reports from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
And now members of the public can see those citations for themselves with a new red warning icon on the agency’s Nursing Home Compare website, which rates nursing homes by quality of care and links to inspection reports.
The nursing home industry calls the icon arbitrary, overly simplistic and an inaccurate portrayal of the quality of care delivered in facilities nationwide. But advocates say it’s an excellent tool to help consumers choose a nursing home.
Ninety-two facilities within a 25-mile radius of Kansas City are ranked. Some of the problems found in the Kansas City area include:
▪ At Garden Valley Healthcare Center in Kansas City, “the facility failed to protect one resident ... from verbal abuse and neglect, when the resident fell out of bed and staff did not respond when the resident cried for help for eight minutes.”
▪ At Pinnacle Ridge Nursing & Rehab Center in Olathe, “the facility failed to ensure further potential abuse did not occur by allowing (a patient) continued and unsupervised access to 22 vulnerable residents on the memory care unit placing the residents in immediate jeopardy.” The report said two residents “physically abused” other residents.
▪ At Highland Rehabilitation & Health Care Center in Kansas City, the facility did not investigate or put any interventions in place, other than separating them, after two residents squared off in the dining room and one later hit the other in the jaw, an inspection report says. The director of nursing, and one of the resident’s spouses, were notified, according to the report.
The administrator of one home cited said the case that instigated the designation was not physical abuse or neglect, but the theft of a resident’s ring by a new employee in 2018. She said the case was reported to police and handled within 24 hours; the employee was fired.
The other facilities tagged with the red abuse icon are: Overland Park Rehab & Healthcare, Clara Manor Nursing Home in Kansas City, Garden Terrace at Overland Park and Kaw River Care & Rehab Center in Edwardsville, Kansas.
Six did not respond to requests for comment. An administrator at the seventh did not want to be quoted.
A new tool for consumers
On the website, the eye-catching icon — a hand held up in a “stop” motion inside a red circle — was used on the latest update in early December. The website has information on more than 15,000 nursing homes certified by Medicare and Medicaid across the country.
The icon flags “facilities that have been recently cited for resident harm or potential harm for abuse or neglect,” the website says.
The icon alerts consumers “when a nursing home has been cited for an abuse violation in the past year or over each of the past two years, depending on the level of harm,” according to the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit law organization that advocates for seniors and people with disabilities.
Medicare says it will review nursing home inspection reports and “update the alert icons to make sure you have the most recent information on nursing home abuse.”
“I really like it ... anything that helps consumers identify facilities that already have problems with providing safe care, or that have already been cited for abuse, neglect or exploitation,” said Mitzi McFatrich, executive director of Kansas Advocates for Better Care in Lawrence. “None of us wants a loved one to be someplace that’s not safe and where people are not providing safe levels of care.
“Repeatedly, what we hear year after year, day after day, from consumers who call us is, ‘This is overwhelming, how do I decide what’s a quality facility? How can I be sure that where I go I’ll get good care?’ So I think it’s a very, very important tool that CMS is using. And I’m delighted to see it.”
The country’s largest association of long-term and post-acute care providers — the American Health Care Association — told Medicare officials that the icon creates a strong visual recommendation “to stop and avoid” going to those nursing homes.
“The quantity of federal regulations to which nursing homes must adhere are very complex and the use of this ‘icon’ to determine whether a facility is a quality facility is very misleading,” Nikki R. Strong, executive director of the Missouri Health Care Association, said in an email to The Star.
“The nursing home icon does not measure quality, it only measures compliance with a few regulations that themselves do not reflect the overall quality of the care being provided in a facility.
“A single incident at an otherwise good nursing home with quality measured by the satisfaction of its residents and the outcomes they achieve can still result in an icon.”
Strong said her association provides training to help members avoid instances of abuse and neglect.
Medicare advises people who are considering a nursing home that’s been cited for abuse “to ask the administrator or other staff about what they’re doing to keep residents safe from abuse, neglect, mistreatment, or exploitation.”
McFatrich also recommends a sit-down with the administrator.
“Each time a deficiency is cited, the facility has to write a plan of correction,” she said. “So what I’m saying to people who call me is you might want to prioritize the facilities that you look at based on the kind of inspection history they have had.
“But if you are looking at one of these facilities because it’s the only one in your community then ... I want to read the actual survey report, which is available publicly at every facility and also online.
“And, I want to talk to the administrator and I want to know exactly what they did to correct it.”
McFatrich’s nonprofit organization is happy to share its database it has kept for more than 20 years on long-term care facilities in Kansas.
Medicare also suggests that people use a long-term ombudsman — advocates for residents who live in nursing homes, care homes and assisted living facilities.
Strong recommends talking to “other families or residents to see what their experience is in a particular home rather than rely on this misleading icon.”
Just because a nursing home on Medicare’s list doesn’t have one of the new abuse icons doesn’t mean abuse is not happening there, the Center for Medicare Advocacy cautioned.
The Nursing Home Compare website considers health inspections, staffing levels and quality of care measurements based on “resident assessment and Medicare claims data” when it ranks facilities, according to Medicare.
Each nursing home is given a rating between 1 and 5 stars — 5 is considered above-average quality and 1 is below average.
These are the nursing homes within 25 miles of Kansas City that Medicare gave one star and five stars. The entire list can be viewed at medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare.
Note: Though the website lists Overland Park Rehabilitation and Kansas City Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare on each of its star-ranked lists, Medicare deems them “special focus facilities” with a “history of persistent poor quality of care, as indicated by the findings of state or federal inspection teams.” Those facilities will be more frequently inspected, could face penalties and ultimately be terminated by both Medicare and Medicaid.
5-star nursing homes within 25 miles of Kansas City
▪ Aberdeen Village, 17500 W. 119th St., Olathe
▪ Advanced Health Care of Overland Park, 4700 Indian Creek Parkway, Overland Park
▪ Brighton Gardens of Prairie Village, 7105 Mission Road, Prairie Village
▪ Brookdale Overland Park, 12000 Lamar, Overland Park
▪ Brookdale Rosehill, 12802 Johnson Drive, Shawnee
▪ Claridge Court, 8101 Mission Road, Prairie Village
▪ Evergreen Community of Johnson County, 11875 S. Sunset Drive, Suite 100, Olathe
▪ The Healthcare Resort of Leawood-Iron Horse Health, 5401 W. 143rd St., Leawood
▪ Hope Care Center, 115 E. 83rd St.
▪ John Knox Village Care Center, 600 N.W. Pryor Road, Lee’s Summit
▪ Lakeview Village, 13840 W. 91st Terrace, Lenexa
▪ Linden Woods Village, 2901 N.E. 72nd St., Gladstone
▪ McCrite Plaza at Briarcliff Skilled Facility, 1301 Tullison Road
▪ Nottingham Health and Rehabilitation, 14200 W. 134th Place, Olathe
▪ Sharon Lane Health Services, 10315 Johnson Drive, Shawnee
▪ Truman Medical Center Lakewood Care Center, 7900 Lee’s Summit Road
▪ Villa St. Francis Catholic Care, 16600 W. 126th St., Olathe
1-star nursing homes withing 25 miles of Kansas City
▪ Autumn Terrace Health & Rehabilitation, 6124 Raytown Road, Raytown
▪ Edgewood Manor Center for Rehab and Healthcare, 11900 Jessica Lane, Raytown
▪ Garden Valley Healthcare Center, 8575 N. Granby Ave.
▪ Grand Pavilion at the Plaza, 4330 Washington
▪ Gregory Ridge Health Center, 7001 Cleveland Ave.
▪ Hidden Lake Care Center, 11400 Hidden Lake Drive, Raytown
▪ Indian Creek Healthcare Center, 6515 W. 103rd St., Overland Park
▪ Kansas City Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare, 12942 Wornall Road (See special note)
▪ Kaw River Care & Rehabilitation Center, 750 Blake St., Edwardsville, Kansas
▪ Lee’s Summit Pointe Health & Rehabilitation, 1501 S.W. Third St., Lee’s Summit
▪ Life Care Center of Grandview, 6301 E. 125th St., Grandview
▪ Life Care Center of Kansas City, 3231 N. 61st St. Kansas City, Kansas
▪ Liberty Health and Wellness, 2201 Glenn Hendren Drive, Liberty
▪ Maple Hills Healthcare, Inc. 7600 Antioch Road, Overland Park
▪ Overland Park Rehabilitation and Healthcare, 5211 W. 103rd St., Overland Park (See special note)
▪ Parkway Health Care Center, 2323 Swope Parkway
▪ Pinnacle Ridge Nursing & Rehab Center, 400 S. Rogers Road, Olathe
▪ Redwood of Blue River, 10425 Chestnut Drive
▪ Redwood of Independence, 1800 S. Swope Drive, Independence
▪ Riverside Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, 4700 N.W. Cliffview Drive, Riverside
▪ Seasons Care Center, 15600 Woods Chapel Road
▪ Swope Ridge Geriatric Center, 5900 Swope Parkway
▪ Truman Gardens, 17451 Medical Center Parkway, Independence
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
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