Report: Prairie Village nursing home put residents in ‘Immediate Jeopardy’ from COVID
A state report found violations at a Prairie Village nursing facility that put residents who lived in three wings of the property in “immediate jeopardy related to the spread of COVID-19.”
Brighton Gardens, which has had 81 cases and 15 deaths from the coronavirus — the most for nursing facilities in Johnson County — was issued an “Immediate Jeopardy” tag on May 11, which is the most severe citation, by the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services.
That distinction describes a provider’s noncompliance that “has caused or is likely to cause serious injury, harm, impairment, or death to a resident,” according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The tag was removed after the facility addressed concerns related to the screening of employees for COVID-19, according to records obtained by The Star on Thursday.
“They were able to address the issues that lead to the IJ citation and abated that during the onsite inspection,” said Cara Sloan-Ramos, a spokeswoman for KDADS.
Brighton Gardens still received several citations and will eventually need to submit a Plan for Correction.
The report found that an employee had worked a shift even though the employee didn’t feel well and had positive signs or symptoms of COVID-19, putting residents in “immediate jeopardy” of infection. It also found that the facility failed to adequately clean and disinfect common areas to reduce the transmission of infection.
The employee, a certified nurse aide, recorded having positive symptoms of COVID-19 on a screening form on April 16 and April 17 but was still allowed to care for residents in seven rooms that comprised the “Blueberry” unit, according to the report. The employee, along with three residents, then tested positive for COVID-19 on April 22.
“The deficient practice placed the residents of the ‘Blueberry’ unit in immediate jeopardy due to the increased risk for transmission of the potentially fatal COVID-19 Virus,” the report said.
And a May 13 report, based on complaint investigations conducted from May 6 to May 13, found that numerous employees had worked when they had symptoms of COVID-19. In addition to failing to send staff home when they were sick, the report said, the administrator “further failed to ensure staff followed appropriate use and reuse of PPE in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19 throughout the assisted living and memory care areas of the facility.”
Among that report’s other findings:
A staff member said that sometimes the person taking employees’ temperatures at the start of each shift “did not wipe off the temporal thermometer before taking the next person’s.”
And a review of the employee screening logs from April 29 to May 5 revealed that on five occasions, the staff failed to record a temperature; five direct care staff answered “yes” to having potential COVID-19 symptoms; and staff marked 94 times that they did not follow infection control outside of work.
Denise Falco, regional vice president of operations for Sunrise Senior Living, which owns Brighton Gardens, said Thursday evening that the facility corrected the Immediate Jeopardy deficiency “which was cleared by the surveyor the same day.”
“In addition to reinforcing all measures of the community’s infection control plan,” Falco said in an emailed statement, “we swiftly executed on the necessary corrective actions including retraining all team members on screening protocols, repeating screenings on each shift and fortifying plans to assess and cohort residents in our skilled neighborhood to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“We take our responsibility to our residents seriously and move decisively whenever improvements may be needed.”
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 6:52 PM.
